Doc Democracy

Re: Deathstroke Hmm. Interesting stuff. I made a Deathstroke clone for my 4th edition game that was essentially some pretty average stats beefed up with SPD 12 and a stack of combat levels. The 12 SPD meant that he had plenty of opportunity to either pour on the pain or recover himself. The reasoning worked well - for the first time the group worked like a team (after they got their butts handed to them in the first fight) delaying so that someone was attacking on every single segment - thus reducing his chance to recover or switch to attack mode, ignoring DCV in a segment where no hero could attack to maximise damage etc. They won the second encounter with relative ease (at least they made him run away). Doc

Re: Finally figured out what I hate about Star Wars in RPGs All of the examples where none of these three took place were against Jedi. I'd say that Jedi 'magic' is in play here. It could be power defence of some kind and it could be some other instant heal or equivalent that means there is a lesser effect. I'm not saying that I completely agree with the original proposal but I don't think that showing effects on Jedi are a ggod way to go about disproving it. Personally I'm inclined to give light sabres damage for non-jedi using them but they would essentially be just a focus for jedi powers for any Jedi user - they wouldn't utilise the damage that the weapon provides but focus their force use through it... Doc

Re: Help on character requested. Personally, I'd build the duplicates with one power each. You can build your main character with a multipower but build each duplicate to have only one power. Limit each slot in the multipower with not when being used by a duplicate (-1/2). At any one time you'll have the main character with an increasingly limited multipower as the duplicates come out until you have four duplicates with one power each and the main character who would only be able to use one power in the multipower. Doc

Re: Multiple-Power Attacks--Untenable Rule I haven't played under 5th yet - lack of opportunity and too many other games to play in the time we have. However, I see MPA as a good addition to a toolkit, I think you have to remember that there are not really 'standard' rules anymore if you buy into the toolkit approach. I might consider making MPA a perk - possibly 5 points or so and that allows two combinations (as agreed with the GM) and an extra combination for every point spent (all with GM agreement). I'd argue that it isn't just for supers - I can think immediately of several sci-fi scenes where a starship goes into a situation full on - firing from all directions (in Star Trek alone I can think of several scenes from TNG and DS9 where a ship uses MPA style attacks). I'm sure given time I could think of examples from fantasy and other genres as well. Perhaps your qualms about it could be soothed simply by making a ruling in your game that MPAs have to be agreed before a session begins. That allows you to discuss the combinations (and their reasonableness) out of the context of a tense combat situation. Doc

Re: First Superhero Campaign, please advise My only advice would be to make sure that the superhero style you are using is one that the players want to play in. If they don't like or don't 'get' the genre then every adventure you run will be fighting against the players and feel like much harder work than it should. Same as any game but other games tend to be more obvious as to the genre 'bits' and conventions that the GM and players agree to abide by. Frex, in the Silver Age a player _knows_ that if he gets beaten up he will not be killed and his mask will not be removed but he may be moved to a death trap.... That would not hold true in an Iron Age game - the players might quite justifiably be upset to get moved to a death trap but not if a villain killed them. Doc

Re: Power Cells

Re: Clarifying Core Defense Mechanic Don't know about anyone else but this whole argument says to me that we do need a simpler more coherent structure for defence costs. Sean is right the logical extreme is that we have six basic mechanical effects with shed loads of advantages and limitations but I think there is a happy place somewhere between here and there. Having basic defence costs based on 1pt per point of defence and other things added to that seems sensible to me. It doesn't seem sensible that differnent pre-costed packages cost more or less than each other. In fact, I curse the man who informed me of the disparities - I was happy in my ignorance! Doc

Re: Power Cells The reason for using END Reserve is that END Reserves are a power in themselves while charges are a limtation/advantage. The END reserve works like charges if you standardise the END costs of weapons in your campaign. So hand blasters use 1 END, rifles cost 2 END, carbiones cost 3 END. Your END reserve with 20 END therefore has 20 charges and hand blaster use 1 charge, rifles cost 2 etc. I would buy the END Reserve as an OIF with the independent limitation on the power as well. Obviously you have to decide how you will allow the power cell to recharge. I'm not sure that the overload should be bought as part of the weapon as you would have to decide whether you limit the size of the explosion or buy it for every weapon as the maximum possible explosion for the biggest available power cell. The alternative would be to buy the explosion as part of the power cell - thus you'd know how big an explosion any particular weapon would be able to cause by looking at the power cell it uses rather than the weapon wielded. I am of the black box side of things - Even if I did work it out the equipment list would only be 'DeVille Power Cell 40' etc. That helps to create atmosphere and keep the players in the setting. END Reserve, 40 END, 5 REC (only when connected to recharging device) take them right back to Champs... Doc

Re: Pulp archtypes. My favourite pulp character was one played by my friend (who in other genres was a confirmed mad slasher). The character was a society gal who was looking for thrills (an archetype I don't think has been mentioned yet). Catherine DuPont was a stunner and highly intelligent (so made a great investigative type, specially when there was high society stuff going on) armed with only a derringer in the stocking top and who had a physical limitation that the first action in any combat situation was to stand and scream... Class character. Doc

Re: I got the snot beat out of me in my first HERO combat......... As I know you don't know what a 4th edition haymaker is Shem, I'll tell you. Rather than adding a few dice damage you get 1.5 times your str damage. So if Darkstar had haymakered you, you'd have taken 24D6, not just 16... Doc

Re: Tales Of The Gold Monkey I have only vague recollections of content but I know that I enjoyed it - for what that is worth. I don't think it would be essential viewing but it would probably be good core stuff.

Re: Pulp Reading It's the same principle I think. If there is a rumour of a lost tribe sitting in a city of gold - you can bet your bottom dollar that it is true (in enough aspects as make any difference) but if the local ghost is suddenly being seen by everyone and his dog then the 'fact' of the ghost is almost certainly false!

Re: Pulp Reading

Re: New FH GM looking for advice That's good advice - when we only have three people available we'll boardgame - it allows the group to bond and socialise and like greymankle says gets people in the habit of turning up.

Re: Mental Powers - another approach I was wondering what effect effects were but left it alone. I am however _very_ interested in what you think the negative effects would be...

Re: Mental Powers - another approach

Re: Mental Powers - another approach Thanks - some of the maths done for me. I love it when that happens

Re: Mental Powers - another approach

Re: New FH GM looking for advice Hmm. Real life is a bitch that seems dedicated to taking away gaming opportunities. I think that the first question is whether your group is interested in gaming - if they can't make a commitment to gaming then you'll never get ANY game running. I find that people that want to play will play just about any game a GM is willing to run. More directly to your question, I think you have to have a fixed game day and run on that day regardless of whether everyone can make it. This means you have to be careful to get sessions to finish at points where characters can jump on and off depending on player participation. Our group has six people. I think you need around seven to ensure you usually have four or five available on any given game night (and if all seven turn up it isn't completely unmanageable). Doc

Re: Mental Powers - another approach I guess no one wants to force you to change but Sean encapsulated my problem with mental powers. (thought I'd quote from the EC thread for context)

Re: How to do this Celtic myth power? Hmm. I was thinking of a Desolid - triggered by a blow that would cause the death of the character. The down side of this is that an affect desolid attack would circumvent it but it would provide the last gasp death prevention. I might - as Sean suggested - see how much this power - or another that you liked cost and then buy a Perk for that cost. Doc

Re: Mental Powers - another approach Well, for the example above, for each phase that the victim does nothing or is not further controlled they recover 5 to their resistance (the value of their ECV). When the resistance goes above 0 they break free completely and before that they'd be able to resist more extreme commands. I'm sure this could work - but I do need to give the costs some thought. Doc

Re: Mental Powers - another approach That'd be good. I like seeing other ways of doing things - especially for mental powers...

Re: Mental Powers - another approach

I was reading Sean's thread on ECs and his last post focuses on one of my long standing bugbears with mental powers, you need 10 to 13 dice in your mental powers to be effective. A corollory to that is that mental powers are an extra mechanic to the system for people to get their heads round. I was thinking whether it might not be possible to use the existing damage mechanism for mental powers. If you have 5D6 Ego Attack you cause cumulative STUN and the effect is reduced by mental defence. If you have 5D6 Mind Control you have almost no chance of doing anything substantial to your target. I submit that it should be possible to attack your opponents INT, PRE or EGO cumulatively until it gets to -10, -20 etc. Opponents would recover based on EGO CV (get ECV back each phase recovered and post segment 12). This would possibly simulate someone struggling for control of another's mind and would also remove the breakout roll - but give a finite time for someone to recover their senses once the mentalist stopped influencing them. Anyone used a system like this before. Thoughts by those that haven't? At least it has the merit that it uses the same damage/recovery mechanic used in physical combat. Doc