Doc Democracy

Re: Handling interpersonal skills I think possibly more useful for KS stuff than more directly applicable skills - though being able to use the numbers to 'allow' a roll is useful for everything. I tend towards adding specialisations coz I like my players to have LOTS of stuff on their character sheets - the more stuff they have the more information I can dish out directly. Doc

Re: Two Annoying Power Builds You've got the Hero absolute-phobia don't you? I suffer from it myself. I'd probably go with the levels option - though I'd also probably ignore the fact that the system doesn't have negative levels that would affect anyone trying to read tracks where the dust was sprinkled...

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Handling interpersonal skills Yeah, that English is a ***** the way it changes from country to country, county to county...

Re: Handling interpersonal skills Ha! Both Phil and I spelled it correctly! I was being even more subtle and playing on the word - that doesn't work trans-Atlanticly!

Re: Handling interpersonal skills A bevy is at least four, fewer than that are simply a handful! A bevvy (in Scots parlance) is enough alcohol to get drunk - so a variable quantity. Doc

Re: Handling interpersonal skills Find your own bevvy, your own maidens as well. After all, you won the stag night game...

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Help with a concept The end cost is an interesting aspect of the field. I think I'm convinced by the argument for armour, costs END. I think I'd have a custom costs END limitation though - something like 1 END per 2 DC of largest attack that phase. That would mean that if was hit by 12D6, 14D6 and 10D6 attacks in a phase then the armour would cost 7 END that phase. This is a different way of cost END for a power but possibly works for this character. If this was too high an END cost then you could go for 1 END per 3DC or even 4DC. You would have to come up with a value for each though. If you were concerned about the NND then it would be easy to add a +3PD/ED forcefield 0END triggered by attacks hitting armour. The glow could come from the forcefield and the majority of the defences from the armour and you'd be NND secure (though this is a metagaming reason!). Doc

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Handling interpersonal skills I think that Sean's premise "the logic is that players decide the character's actions, not dice rolls" goes against the very core of roleplaying. This is not the player in the game but a role that they are supposed to be playing. In Hero it should be a role they have very carefully defined and so it shouldn't be too onerous being made to comply with dice rolls dictated by that role. Pendragon was the game I had the biggest arguments on this topic. All the personality traits dictated whether the character would follow a particular path or not. One of my friends thought that he should be defining the characters actions - I thought that the player defines the character and the character defines the game actions. Doc

Re: Dodging perceived threats You started it with your PER roll justifications...

Re: Dodging perceived threats

Re: Draining FF too expensive? I think Mrs Phil might say that better drving skill would do the same job...

Re: God of the Machines You might want to look at the Mostal religion designed for dwarves in Glorantha. They believe in a World Machine where chaos and free-will have caused parts of the machine to fail and allowed entropy to creep into the world. The dwarves are isolationist and those dwarves that leave the dwarf strongholds are deemed mad and subject to entropy but those that stay within their pre-ordained tasks in the repair of the machine live forever. This would be a decent kind of religion for machine intelligences - their form of anthropising the universe. It also allows you to introduce strange and inexplicable actions by those intelligences on the basis that this is what has been 'revealed' to them as necessary in fixing the world machine. There are lots of potential splits in doctrine as to where organic life fits into the grand design. Doc

Re: Dodging perceived threats I would add to that an attack that is indirect or has IPE... Doc

Re: Look out for the wall! If you know the velocity then everything else is simply newtonian mechanics. You _could_ limit the movement per segment and that might mean that the PC flying through the air manages to get off a last despairing EB before they crash into the vault door... I'm concerned by the speed reference though. If a STR 60 brick punches someone and gets 14" knockback then, in the current system that takes place over one segment - 28m/s? Don't think so. The problem is that at the end of the segment there is no velocity remaining - it all dissipates over the segment. Under your system you would calculate velocity rather than distance - the victim then travels at a velocity away from the attack and begins to accelerate towards the ground due to gravity. The distance is going to depend on how far he travels before he hits the ground and then how quickly the friction of hitting the ground brings him to a complete stop. There is a lot of physics going on there that I don't want to think about. Obviously this begins to mean that the angle of attack and angle of KB relative to the ground becomes important (that changes how quickly the victim hits the ground and increases the distance travelled horizontally while tracing his parabola). More calculations... If you calculate speed (Dice/3) then I think you have to say that the horizontal speed will not change between leaving his feet to hitting either the ground or a solid object. The speed will then dissipate. You might want to say that a standing target will hit the ground in one segment and for every 2" height the time increases by one segment. Are you saying that I'm wrong? You have bumped the fridge along using your momentum rather than straight physical strength. Doc

Re: Look out for the wall! Why would you want to calculate distance AND velocity? Do either one or the other. Personally I like the game simplicity of calculating distance and then converting what's left of that distance into dice of damage when you hit something. It's quick and simple. I'm sure you have, in the past, bumped your fridge (or some other piece of furniture) along the floor but wouldn't be able to throw it...so perhaps the situation isn't so idiotic. If you were going to calculate velocity then you'd have to be doing Newtonian style calculations to work out how fast the person was moving 4" or 8" later when they smacked into the wall. Down with velocity!! Doc

Re: Re-vitalising the speed chart Obviously! I was thinking still in the PS12 comes right after 12 mode! 13 cards work well then. One deck gives you four complete turns and a card shoe would give you about sixteen turns - more than in most games I play in one night... Doc

Re: Re-vitalising the speed chart Thanks MarkDoc I've seen these alternatives over time. I have toyed with the idea of getting a card holder, like in the casinos, and using the cards for phases - obviously all of the phases will come up at one point or another over time - just not in any predictable fashion (unless you are a card counting genius). I was never sure what to do about the kings - take em out or use them for random events... Doc

Re: Dodging perceived threats I'm going to take that home and frame it somewhere my wife can see it....

Re: Dodging perceived threats I always have a problem basing this on a PER roll. My favourite thing in these circumstances is to base it on tactics or danger sense. Either one of these would be appropriate to the situation and give you some credibility in 'knowing' that a particular type of attack was in the making. Doc

Re: Shared Powers by Heroes of Common Origin Now, we're talking here about powers that can only be used if more than one PC links with others and any PC might be the point man while the others simply act as boosters to the power, yes? One way I've done this before is using duplication where the PC's are essentially duplicates and there is a character sheet for the big combine. This might still be a workable way - see how much the uber-PC would cost with duplication where it could get the characters as played and split the duplication cost among the various members. You could then have a series of character sheets that represent the abilities of a combination of two characters, or three or four or them all together (I'd handwave the costs of having this variety - they've paid for the duplication -though I suppose you could buy the duplication with variable special effects). The more work you wanted to do the more specific you could be about the effects of various Members combining with others. Frex, the fireguy combines with the brick and they get bonus powers with a heat motif, or the magnetic guy combines with the Fireguy and you get a plasma motif. Doc