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TheEmerged last won the day on December 10 2004
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Re: WWYCD: The Basics My character is a supervillain, you don't want to know how this goes down
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Re: Worst Fear! Stefan "The Grey" Sashkey (from The Emergence campaign, that world's equivalent of the Spectre): Stefan can see the future to the extent that such a thing is possible, and realized the two most likely futures were both dystopias. In one the Earth is enslaved by an alien empire. In the other, Earth is the empire enslaving the aliens. Which one happens depends on whether "Everett" succeeds in conquering the Earth. Stefan therefore committed himself to the difficult path: killing Everett, and then spending the rest of his nigh-immortal existance saving the universe from the scum of the Earth. SythRyss (D&D "Skull Empire" campaign). SythRyss's fear is simple: he fears that when he confronts the elf that charmed him into killing his friends, he won't be powerful enough to exact his revenge. The Disruptor. Again, his fear is simple: he fears being captured by the "authorities", because he knows he'll never survive imprisonment. He actually has this as a Total disadvantage.
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Re: More on Block and STR Another classic example of a "block" against an opponent of a much higher strength is the common trick of using an object to jar a large monster's mouth open. RE: "Unblockable" attacks. As mentioned, AE:1H and Indirect are good ways to simulate this. However, you can often achieve something very close to this simply with 3-6 skill levels, depending on how wide the CV range is in your campaign. My 600-ish point rewrite of Ironclad, for example, has 4 of these levels. Personally I've begun adopting the same cost structure as PSL's for limited CSL's...
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Who is the greatest Marksman (or Woman)
TheEmerged replied to JmOz's topic in HERO System Discussion
Re: Who is the greatest Marksman (or Woman) Well, for NeoChampions it would be The Gunner -- base 10 OCV. Add +10 skill levels with guns to this. Add +10 OCV, only to counteract size bonuses to DCV or OCV penalties based on size. Add +10 OCV, only to counteract DCV bonuses for Dodge & OCV bonuses for Block/Deflect. Add +10 PSL's vs shot placement (includes Hit Location penalties) Add +10 PSL's to counteract penalties based on not being able to see the target (obstruction, darkness, etc). Now add "No Range" as a naked advantage on 100 active points, give her 2 identical 50-pt multipowers (in a campaign in which 75 active MP is the norm), and a boatload of applicable talents & skills. Top it off with Guns Know Their Mistress, +10 DCV, only vs guns -
Re: Detect Vulnerability Hey, I've got an NPC with all three (Find Weakness, VSE EB, and Detect Vulnerability)... I've defined "detect vulnerabilities" as a subset of the Hound Senses (AKA "nova detects"), as such it doesn't get any bonuses from Simulated Sense and the character has to pay for everything. There are a few pertinent campaign rules that affect how this works though... #1> Detect Vulnerability works at the Meta-SFX level, just like everything else of this nature. So if it's defined as being a nova power it won't detect magical vulnerabilities, psionic vulnerabilities, or technological vulnerabilities. #2> It would require the Analyze adder -- and hence automatically be dependent upon the Analyze skill and everything that using it entails (such as the time involved). #3> Because I'm from the school of thought that says skills should matter, I penalize or give bonuses to the roll based on how 'obvious' within campaign logic the disadvantage is. Discovering that Captain Freon is vulnerable to heat gets a +2 bonus. Discovering the Amazing Babe gets her powers from her belt is a +/- 0. Discovering that Killer Frost is vulnerable to cold gets a -4 penalty, unless the character has an appropriate KS (KS: Supervillains would be -3 penalty, KS: American Supervillains would be -2, KS: Firestorm's Rogues would be -1, KS: Killer Frost would mean no penalty). RE: Find Weakness, only vs opponents with Vulnerability. I'd consider allowing this, but -1 seems high. I'd probably peg that around -1/2
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Re: WWYCD: Attraction Loop The Disruptor (my GM-PC) has a COM of Zero, an Extreme Reputation 14- as one of the most hated novas in the continuity (the campaign equivalent of Superman/Captain Marvel named him as one of three figures in history he could justify the death penalty for), a PRE of 30, and an INT of 45. As such he'd immediately be suspicious of the motives and/or sanity of any woman that showed an interest in him.
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Re: Disadvantage #1> I've always felt that the baseline point system has always given too many points for disadvantages. I use 100+50 for Heroic and 250+100 for Superheroic as starting points myself. #2> The balance between the value of combat vs non-combat disadvantages depends heavily on the GM. If you aren't putting enough emphasis on non-combat situations the combat disadvantages are going to seem undervalued (that is, the points you get is too low for what it costs). #3> However, I think the common mistake of having low STUN scores relative to DC/DEF values makes this problem more visible. If like most published 5th Ed characters you are in negative STUN after two average hits from your main attack, don't put all the blame at the feet of your vulnerability that makes it one average hit instead... #4> The timeline value of Disadvantage makes it impractical for many uses it otherwise seems intended for. I have never had a player take this disadvantage, ever, even in campaigns where I mandated 25 pts of Vulnerablity/Susceptibility/Dependence disadvantages, in the 15+ years we've played the system. Ever. At the very least, the "zero" value should be moved to the 5-8 hour mark, perhaps the 1 day mark...
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Re: Building a Super-History... Some questions to ask yourself: >Do I wants with to go the Astro City route (people with powers have been running around for decades without affecting anything?) or more of an alternate history campaign? If you go option 2, try to avoid the "wishful thinking" trap. >Do I want females with superpowers running around far enough in the past to affect the Women's Rights movement? >Do I want people in masks allowed to testify in court? I have found that this issue tends to be a great starting points for other world points >How much do I want psionics (telepathy & mind control in particular) to affect things? >Pick a group of four or five "first supers". Chances are their character/natures have formed the stereotypes in people's minds.
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Re: Golden Age Myth? Let's remember that in Action Comics #1 Superman threatens to beat up a woman if she doesn't tell him what he wants to know. Let's remember that Batman originally carried a gun. Let's remember that one of Plastic Man's earliest power tricks was reflecting bullets back at the people that shot them, usually fatally. Let's remember that Wonder Woman... wait, the WW comics of the Golden Age wouldn't pass the board rules Someone earlier mentioned that the pre-Code Golden Age books were a lot closer to the pulps -- this is a pretty strong argument that actually reading the books of that era tends to back up. This is especially true once WW2 was underway, when killing Nazi's and Japs was commonplace (sometimes offscreen but not always). There were some sillier stuff -- one classic Plastic Man story involves, I kid you not, butter smuggling (it was overly rationed early in the war). The whole square-jawed goody-goody nonkiller thing comes from the later, post-Code Golden Age and was reinforced during the horror that was the Silver Age. Okay, I'm being slightly editorial there (I got into comics during the later part of the Silver Age and fail to see the nostalgia for it) but the point remains.
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Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6?
TheEmerged replied to The Souljourner's topic in HERO System Discussion
Re: Thoughts on using 1d20 instead of 3d6? Speaking as someone who plays d20 and HERO, I *much* prefer the 3d6 curve. The d20 simply leads to too wide of a swing for my taste; such a wide swing of random chance minimizes the importance of skill. Of course, if that's what you want, it's a game and the purpose is to have fun. -
Re: Silver Avenger Write-up? Exactly, I said in the earlier post that... So in a world where the PC's are ~450-500 characters and the Champions are 575-656 characters, the Silver Avengers are 400-600 characters and the Golden Avenger is a 2000-pt world-beater.
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Re: Is Combat Driving Enough? Depends, do you *want* it to matter? The answer to your question depends heavily on how much you feel the skills should play a role in your genre. If you want 11- to represent a professional level of skill, then you probably shouldn't worry about anything beyond Combat Driving/Piloting. On the other hand, if performing these stunts is a major part of the campaign that occurs regularly, then requiring multiple skills is called for. Similarly, requiring finer gradients with the PS/KS/SS family of skills is similarly called for. To pick on Iron Chef as an example, it's completely within the genre to have seperate PS: skill for different forms of cooking, as well as PSL's to represent special skills with certain ingedients, a seperate PS for Plating (or even multiple schools of plating technique), KS to represent knowledge of recipes as oppossed to the techniques...
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Re: Silver Avenger Write-up? Little things like... 150 STR, +1 1/2 Variable Advantage (with +1/2 generally going to No END) 60 CON 60 DEF Hardened 120 VPP "Brick Tricks" "Uber Boss Effect" == 75% Reduction for PD & ED; 50% Reduction for MD and PowD She's built to be a world-beater, one of the ten most powerful people *in the campaign universe*. Not the Earth, not America, but still just a notch below the three truly cosmic powers...
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Re: How much attention do you give to powers' Senses visibility rules? RE: Requiring players to define the groups. Actually, I bypass a lot of this with a few standards 1> Every non-mental power is visible to normal sight. 2> Except in VERY special cases, sense number two is normal sound 3> When in doubt, sense number three is mental 3a> If the defense is ED, sense number three should probably be Radio (as static if nothing else). 3b> If the defense is PD, sense number three could well be olfactory (sensing the sweat the physical exertion causes, for example)
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Re: Wanting to make a character, need advice. Concept: Yeah, the A->B->C thing needs work. As to the multiple concepts? It can work, when done right. I'd recommend working toward being able to do specific things than a broad concept -- with multiple power sources like this, if you go the VPP route you end up with Duex Ex Machina Woman, and that's only good for a solo campaign (one player, one GM).