zornwil

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER What kind of work, can you say?

Re: Shrinking Issues Although, I would add, there are rules under Transformation Attack regarding beneficial effects/granting of powers.

Re: Designing a Post human society How's it going, Katherine? Hope to find more threads on the game! Probably way too late, but, anyway, I would just mention that it may include an awful lot of "personal honor" sorts of mentality and scads of new sorts of clans. Probably an attempt at anarchy or degradation into anarchy at least early on with the freedom from humanity and the sense of personal power being so strong. Some suggest it might look a lot like City of Heroes, with all that preening and showing off!

Re: What's the most outrageous plot your PCs have ever been subjected to When my players screwed up in the electronic dimension, they inadvertantly brought all the toons into this dimension! During that adventure, the PCs faced, among others, a relentless Wilford Brimley (sp) saying "It's the right thing to do!" or whatever that phrase was back then. During this campaign, 3 PCs went back to ancient (very very ancient) Egypt to discover the original aliens who bred human development along with the human-alien hybrids. In another point in the game, a PC was quite surprised to find out his wife was Prince Namor's illegitimate child - which he found out after facing Namor in a death-match because Namor thought she was his old lover (strong mother-daughter resemblance)! PS - they also got to see the alternate world "evil" Justice Squad, only so interesting if you know the characters, though

Re: What's the most outrageous plot your PCs have ever been subjected to L.G. (name not given to protect the innocent) was your GM, too? Sounds like a guy from high school who GMed fantasy for us. Then again, it was high school after all.

Re: The end of a game and mixed feelings I know this is old, but I found it really interesting. Thanks for the info, Katherine!

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Thrak, new topic?

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points? I would use campaign guidelines, sure, and for villains you may (depends a lot on the groups and the dynamics) stretch them a bit. In my experience, villains generally need more power and will behave more poorly in "real" (vs PC) combat than in the mock combats (which is an excellent point Mike W made), unless the players are simply poor tacticians or bad at teamwork. Otherwise, if the players are mostly about your aptitude/knowledge with tactics and such, there being more of them they will tend to be more inventive than you might think.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I'll just say I don't think the ends were what Trencher thinks. I think RFK was/is a sociopath but that the manifestation in this community, aside from a few individual issues which I'm not dismissing, were, during that time, generally positive. Just to clarify my point plus comment on "the ends". But of course opinions vary. PS - wonder who he is now? Don't really care - I don't see a reason for alarm even if he lurks among us, so long as he's still exercising the goal of being seen as some wonderful being he is not and "fooling" us.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Well, it's an old discussion, so I'm not going to belabor it.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? Agreed, I was building a game from HERO but not a HERO game, if you know what I mean, using the HERO system as purely a toolkit. To HERO-ize it, though, I think it becomes a comparison of area affected versus Size Level and some sort of Coverage or Damage Reduction or reuse of an existing mechanic. PS - and thanks!

Re: Mental Powers I'm absolutely with Hugh. I'm not opposed to the classes thing completely, but I think it should have been presented (if at all - not sure it was worth the space) as "here's an EXAMPLE of how a GM might want to deploy mental powers, and the campaign condition to do this is...". Otherwise the class thing, in my mind, is essentially useless because it trumps OTHER SFX, so now we have the system NOT ONLY delving deeper into SFX but doing so at odds with how powers might be constructed and how the campaign might be built and with little guidelines on that. A bad use of rules bandwidth, so to speak. I think mental powers must be defined simply by SFX, and no more, no less, and if we must limit those SFX that's fine, the book can go ahead and give that guideline, then. But we know animals don't speak languages (well, generally)...so if your mental control is English-speaking broadcasting of thoughts, you will only be effective to the extent that Fido the dog, a normal house pet, knows the words you use. And that Spanish-only speaking guy will have some issues, too. Whereas if you broadcast pictures, the dog will see what you show...and intepret thusly. And so on and so on. And that also bugs me about mental powers - this whole classes thing glosses over what should be requested of players, which is what really are the SFX of the mental power? I have a default that I use because IME most players are rather vague about it and they say "it's psionic". Well is that brain wave broadcasting/reception and tinkering? Or magic? Or energy that isn't brain waves but "reprograms' the target with biochemical impulses? Because - JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER POWER - that should drive the discussion. Not general classes which may or may not apply to a campaign or genre.

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points? I more or less agree with MitchellS but not to the extreme he paints it. What is important is the type of attacks, type of damages, what your PCs are like, and that varies so much campaign to campaign it makes a simple clean approach impossible. However, there have been threads on this. I'm going to be lazy and hope that Lord Liaden does the link thing he's so good at...but it he doesn't feel free to bump and I can look around and link. In the meantime, I generally do want villains to have more "raw power" in points than the heroes. A single villain needs it especially as there's only him and his single SPD versus the characters. For a single villain, very broadly speaking, around the total of the PCs is roughly minimally needed (assuming around 4-5 PCs, more and it scales less, fewer and actually about the same as he's more likely to paste a big part of the team right away), usually 1.5x-3x just depending (3x can be excessive but useful if many of the points are sunk into "mundane" attacks). These are extremely rough guidelines, don't take them to heart. For team villains, essentially the same route, more raw points as the GM has only one mind to the players' many minds, but usually not a x3 range, more of a x1.5 on a man-for-man basis.' But, really, that's so rough a cut that it's only vaguely meaningful. When I design most villains I don't do all of their stuff in detail, glossing over non-combat stuff if it's not going to come into play, but also not being efficient with the build, the two tend to balance out for a "points perspective" although with inefficient builds I do end up with villains who appear monstrous in points but are just inefficient and really worth less, so that can be taken into account. I do look at rough totals just to have a vague idea what ballpark I'm in. At the end of the day, it's really about specific capabilities, not so much points.

Re: Another Suggestion for Dropping Figured Characteristics I always find the various "remove derived from base" schema to be interesting. As to Doc Democracy's idea, it's a good one (I basically did that in Cyber Ninja Pirates, though it was a bit more hybridized because I also wanted lots of general skill ability, so skills replaed chars as basic building blocks, essentially, but it is one instead of two systems), but I think where that idea gets more rather than less complicated is for the situations, especially in supers, where most characters do beef up to some degree almost all characteristics, thus one would have to do a bit of learning on all of them, probably adding rather than subtracting from the curve in those situations. Personally, I think the current basic/derived schema works well as a built-in framework, but it confuses the system coherency, but then again it's very playable and it seems people relate well to it. It therefore tends to rank low on my list of rework possibilities.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? On the larger issue, personally, I would actually want a scale that curves up somewhat rapidly then less and less, so that it takes a lot more to be sgnificantly greater with the same points beyond a certain level, to simulate that there are diminished returns. That's sort of how I did STR, I had a formula more complex than Fox1's in that it really depended on break points and a fairly complex formula, all for Lift and related. I abandoned that for compatiblity and ease, though. In actual Play Experience, I just don't have an issue with the exponential and linear dichotomy EXCEPT that at higher and higher levels char and skill rolls become almost meaningless compared to "average" and, furthermore, just as cheap to double every 5 points, which seems a bit much. That's where I have flirted with the idea of schema such as multiple "maxima" that double the cost every level, so that (just as an example) at 20 we double the CP cost for a char, at 30 we double it again, and so on. So at each quadrupling of effect we double the cost, basically. But that all doesn't seem necessary, in the end, to model most heroic fiction. It gets wonky (IME) only on the edges, in the higher edges, and it's usually almost necessary to deal more case by case as the efforts and results get more esoteric at that point and usually more SFX-laden. Then again, I haven't given it enough thought largely because I'm not so disenchanted with the Play Experience. So I think it's certainly worth talking about as it's a fundamental under-pinning and there's certainly been ongonig issues and confusion on multiple related points.

Re: Exponential VS Linear ? I actually took this whole issue a different way, but related to the "pinpoint" idea, in Cyber Ninja Pirates. Basically, the Size Level matters. If a Size Level (X) with a weapon mounted appropriate to its size level (fudgy, yeah...) shoots at a larger Size Level (Y), then there are really two damage effects. The overall damage effect, the one we normally talk about, the one that affects the target's BOD, of what actually gets through is reduced by 1 for each difference in Size Level. You could also simply take this as comparing the total area affected by the attack (which is much better, I did it a different way for mere simplicity in the game setting) and the Size Level of that attack against the Size Level of the target. So if you have something that affects an area of, say, Size Level 3 and it strikes a Size Level 8 target, and it does 27 damage, 12 of which gets through the DEF of the SL 8 target, then that 12 is reduced by 5 - the SL 8 minus SL 3. So only 7 actually gets through. But I do call for a minimum of 1 BOD to get through - but this also scales down if the size difference is very great. The rule for this reads: "Beyond a size difference of 10 the minimum is only inflicted if on a d10 roll the result is equal to or greater than the difference divided by 5, dropping any fraction. For example, if the Size Level difference is 11, 1 BOD is inflicted on a d10 roll of 2 or better as 11 divided by 5 equals 2 (with the fraction dropped). A Size Level difference of 19 would require a d10 roll of 3 or better (19/5 = 2 with the fraction dropped), and so on. This means that a Size Level difference of 55 inhibits any real damage at all." The rule goes on, though, about the pinpoint effect: "This does not mean that the damage indicated prior to the Size Level adjustment is irrelevant. In fact, it is very important, simply in a smaller area which has little importance in the overall “life†of the vehicle but is quite important to breaching it if desired. If the damage done prior to the Size Level adjustment is half or more of the target’s BOD, a hole is breached that is big enough for the attacking object to move through without collision, though requiring a Piloting or vehicle Agility skill roll (as normal with any vehicular Agility roll as described above regarding vehicle skills) if a vehicle is attacking or a character’s Agility roll if an individual is attacking. It is natural where the damage was less than half for characters to attempt to expand the hole by striking adjacent to the first blow; this however invokes a -5 penalty to the attack roll, and if the roll succeeds by 4 or less the new damage (if any) may be added to the prior for this determination. If the roll succeeds by 5 or better and so long as at least 1 BOD penetrates the hole is automatically large enough for the vehicle or character to penetrate, assuming the Piloting or Agility roll. GMs who wish to streamline this process and eliminate tracking the damage may simply set the penalty to 8 and success (again, assuming any BOD damage gets through DEF) automatically allows for the Piloting/Agility roll." That was my own solution. You can substitute "planet" for "vehicle" above.

Re: In a Bind I would say Escape Artist or Contortionist would be the thing to use, preferably. PS - these are skills in the book, wait, only Contortionist is, Escape Artist is no more (in one of the more reprehensible changes, IMHO)

Re: Does Unluck Really Screw You? I use it fairly traditionally for when the character is doing well - and I remember to roll it! Then it's usually some sort of mild or semi-serious reversal (like VDM, I won't put a PC in mortal jeopardy, at least not unless their character concept calls for it so that they took many d6 of Unluck). Other than that an occasional minor inconvenience, preferably humorous. But I can't remember the last Unluck PC...hmm, better check sheets again, too...

Re: Shrinking Issues Would you mind emailing me as well? Just curious, really, though, so if it's a pain for some reason make it a low priority or don't bother.

Re: Chases I'm more or less like DR. I find heroes most often don't want to try brute force out-running the villains, they'll usually resort to other powers and tricks, if they have the time. But frankly I'm not good at chases and villains are usually slipping away when the action's heavy, so that they just get away, or if they are running at the end of a fight they usually just get away (some great escape method or simply speed) or they seem to get caught pretty quick.

Re: The Last Word Sigh. Those lizards are lazy, too. There's work to do but all they do is do gaming stuff. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Sorry to hear that Cancer, good luck.

Re: The Last Word How did you know?

Re: Goofy Disadvantage / Power Ideas Hey, Bud Man should have hooked up with my NPC Bud Girl! She carried around a keg with a treacherous brew and exuded pheremonal sort of mind control. Though she looked a lot better, she looked like the Bud Girls from those ads. I've made up lots of goofy villains, but I think that's just bragging if I go on about those. As for PCs, though, and jaw-dropping concepts, I don't know I'd go so far as to say jaw-dropping, but I liked Scissorsman, based on the XTC song about the character.

Re: The Last Word