WilyQuixote

Re: How would you use Gravitar? Gravitar saw some mild off camera use in our Millenial Men campaign a year and a half or so back. The Mill Men member Gravitic is actually her half brother! In our campaign she realized that their respective father had many children spread across the globe due to his jet setting playboy life style. While not all of these children were mutants at least one other beside Gravitar and Gravitic did have super powers which were of course based around gravity. His name was Massive and he was the first recruited by Gravitar for the suppossed reason of uniting any of the other siblings into a powerful team to take over the world together and rule as a family dynasty I would guess. Unfortunately for Killer Shrike and the rest of the Players looking for a good story line the player of Gravitic didn't seem to like that idea and so didn't play along. I mean that in a literal sense, the player literally said something along the lines of I don't want to do this and stopped playing! Granted at this point in the game we had in an effort to accomidate most of the groups odd work schedules switched to playing on Hero Central. The player of Gravitic only voiced his dissent at the idea of Hero Central after we had all switched over and started up again. It was frustrating in the extreme and a total wash of using a great villain! So that was how we were going to use the mighty Gravitar. Alas it just wasn't meant to be. Shrike if he is so inclined and has a spare moment (rare these days with a two month old new born and ever increasing insane work hours) might just elaborate more on his plans for the villainess.

Re: Druss Hello Guys and Gals, Ive been off line for a little over a year now (don't ask) but am back, though I usually just lurk on these boards and never really have anything useful to contribute. This however is a topic I love to discuss, anything by Gemmell! He is my all time favorite writer and Jon Shannow is my favorite of his many heroes. I think your interpretations of Druss and Waylander are interesting. I myself would have built them at the end of their long and legendary careers. In fact one night when I had nothing better to do I sat down and plotted out that Waylander died right around the time Druss would have been born (roughly mind you my math coulda been off a little). Never mind the fact that Waylander actually went back in time to save his wife and kids from their horrible fates and thus setting Dakeras on the path to becoming the most feared assassin in all the known world. Also IRC Waylander's friend ol "Hard-To-Kill" though it was never confirmed was Druss's great grandfather I think. I don't remember off hand, its been years since I read the books. Anyways personally I wouldn't have even worried about how many points any of Gemmell's heroes come out too. ALL of his main heroes were exceptionally hypercompetent in combat and their chosen trades respectively. Druss knew soldiering like nobodies buisiness, Waylander could be argued to know all practical skills and languages plus having IMHO 4-5 OLs and varying CLs. He admitted he was good with swords (short swords in particular) over other standard weapons and he was best with knives and his crossbow period. I think buying the crossbow as a power is the way to go, and Druss kept Snaga through all his days till he died. Even after the demon was exorcised from the Axe it was still highly regarded as a weapon of exceptional craftsmanship and never needed sharpening so I'd say buy it as a power too. Also neither character would be out of line to be given atleast IMHO 3-5 lvls of Deadly Blow of varying degrees depending on who its for. I know this may seem excessive and depending on the campaign it just might be but consider that neither character ever had to hit someone more then once before they died. Even the dreaded Joinings who shrugged off most blows easily went down after one or two hits from these deadly warriors and IRC neither ever really took time to find weakness on an opponent. IME its better and faster to just do gobs more damage then they can take rather then waste an action on FW. The lethality is the same. I know it depends on campaign rules. As far as CHARs go again I wouldn't count the points or worry about it. Yes they considered themselves "just men" but they were more then that. Id give Druss a STR, CON, EGO, & PRE of 30 easy, and a BOD of 20 with the +10 BOD ability left on too. Druss was one of the strongest men around and that Boxer that was "bigger" could still have a 30 STR too. IMO his combat prowess in the ring came from DCs in his martial art which at that time Druss had not yet learned. Druss had never needed to learn how to throw a punch properly, his immense STR was always enough to carry the day. IRC that same boxer taught Druss how to box after the fight too. Now of course we would need to take in the age penalties too so at the end of it Druss might have onlyhad a STR of 25 but still. Waylander I would have given a CON & BOD of 20, a DEX of 23ish or so with lotsa lightning reflex lvls, EGO 30, and to make him so fearsome he gets PRE bonus just buy 7-10 lvls of REP. He was never very impressive to people who didn't know who he was but when it was known everybody feared him. His real strength as an assassin was only a very few select individuals knew what he looked like in the first place. Waylander interacted with tons of people and they not being any wiser about who he was treated him just like any other person. I remember one scene where he actually walked up to the manor of his victim and applied for a job as a guard to "protect" the victim from himself no less and was hired on gleefully with all the rest seeking the exhorbant paycheck being offered. Then when he killed the guy he just hung out at the manor with all the rest of the guards no one knowing who he was. It didn't even take a disguise roll on his part! Anyways I think all the previous suggestions were all good ones and should be kept or atleast seriously considered before dismissing, this was just my own two cents worth free of charge. I sincerely miss David Gemmell and mourn his passing.

Re: Mung the Dwarven Monk Shrike's games usually are.

Re: Mung the Dwarven Monk I still get this error: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /2005/08/character-of-week-mung.html on this server.

Re: a PC OOPSED Sounds like good fodder for the campaign. Good reoccuring problem for the PC. I wouldnt make them take the Hunted for free though; find some equivalent Disad the character does have that has outlived its usefulness and swap it out as a normal part of the character's "growth". One thing though: put some line breaks in your posts please!!!! Thanx!

Re: High Fantasy HERO Site Update If I didnt actually know you in real life, Id think you were some kind of AI or robot.

Re: Mung the Dwarven Monk The link is bad, but on the subject of Dwarven Monks, Killer Shrike once threw a Dwarven hand to hand fighter at us called Kantabbot who was monk like in his abilities, and he was awesome. Later on Shrike told me he named him that as a combination inside joke \ homage to Tank Abbot, the UFC fighter from back in the day. In fact, we've seen a lot of bareknuckled Dwarven brawlers of various sorts over the years. Seems to be one of Shrike's standard shticks.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Yeah thats right. Thanks for filling in the blanks! I also played the unexploded cow game and a few of their other games to. My friend who used to lurk on these boards under the name of Dr Lucky (can you tell he liked these games?) had alot of them.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! You know after reading this discussion I remembered playing a great board game one time based on time travel. The name of the game escapes me at the moment but it was made by a company called Cheapass Games. These guys made just that... cheap *** games that had some really bad games mixed in with some really good games. Anyways the game Im thinking of was one of the better ones they made. You played a scientist trying to be the first person in time to build a time machine! Then once you built your time machine you had to race to the patent office on the very first day it opened and be the first person in line to list and patent your invention. Thus you were "officially" the inventor of time travel! It may sound corny and have a total disregard for the science behind time travel but the game was fun.

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers? Hey no worries, water off a duck's back and all that. While I was away I remembered some details of the final night of that campaign (fondly I might add). The group basically walked into a hostile base to negotiate a return of an important NPC. Saemund was the driving force of the venture saying basically "Im going whether the rest of you go or not." I'd also like to point out that Saemund warned the others they would die if they went with him (boy was that a self fullfilling prophesy:eg: ). Anyways once the rest of the group decided they were going they demanded that Kjar accompany them after he said he was staying behind. He was something of a homebody when left alone. In the end to convince him to go they tried ego massaging... "We may have need of your great magics Zauberer!" I woulda come up with a reason for Kjar to tag along anyways but I liked watching the other players sweat it out. They knew they were going to need Kjar with them after seeing him in action in previous encounters. In the end the whole group minus Fyrclian went on the rescue mission. Fyrclian flat refused to go into the caves (Base), she had a Psych DISAD: Clausterphobia. No amount of cajoling her would change her mind either so she stayed behind to orginize defenses for the village. When the dust settled the only remaining PC survivors of the mission were Saemund (my PC) ,Kjar (my PC), and Fyrclian who of course stayed behind. We saved the hostage NPC and there were two other NPCs who went along with the group who also survived as well. Good times. I know what you mean about dry spells though. Shrike and I have been looking for decent players for years and have been forced to take what we can get for a long time. Good hero players are a rare thing unfortunately.

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers? Shrike has been accussed of many things being a GM and all over the years but being accused of "treating us with the kid gloves" he wasn't. The only players Ive seen him give a some slack too are the new players in the group and thats just till they get their teeth cut. This was never the case for Kjar, being Shrike's longest running gaming buddy he never cuts me slack at the table, quite the opposite in fact. Thats ok though because thats how I like it. For me it makes the game far more enjoyable knowing if "I screw this up and I'm done for", rather then thinking no matter how dire it gets the GM isn't really going to kill off my PC. As to your queries of the ambushes and fights in general. Here's what I remember about them. Kjar always had the tunnelling spell on unless it got dispelled in the opening exchange of the ambushes. Its a 24 hour continueing charge so why not? Kjar also made all but one of his PER checks regarding noticing the ambushes either through use of his OLs or just plain rolling lucky. The one time he failed his PER check happened to be while he was asleep and even then the tunnelling ability did him absolutely no good whatsoever. He was on the second floor of an inn at the time and so could not dirt dive to safety. In that ambush Kjar was very nearly done in, he was taken down to three BODY and staggered from the STUN roll. I don't recall exactly what saved him from certain death but the group was working as team thankfully on that night and the assassin had multiple foes to worry about. Kjar did have that 3DEF FF going but that only took the edge off the dmg. Looking back I'm glad it was 3rDEF or Kjar woulda been at zero BODY! The main thing is Kjar never had a defense spell up and running continually because he didn't have a spell like that (unless you count the tunnelling spell). So after he had succeeded in his PER check the first thing he did (except in the inn) was DfC one hex straight down. Then unless the enemy had some oddball attack Kjar was the most heavily defended member on the team at that point. After that was accomplished he use phase 3 to half move somewhere and cast a defense spell that was best for the situation. Phase 6 rinse and repeat of 3. When 9 rolled around Kjar was usually sufficiently buffed up to make an appearance again and since the battle was almost always still going strong by this point he would hold his action till 11 to make the most of it with his 12 unless something came up to force his hand. The nature of the ambushes was different each time. When travelling the country side we had our werewolf scouting out ahead in his wolf form of course. Incidently on that particular ambush the PC flubbed his PER check of the waiting ambushers with an 18. So much for reconning the area:doi:! Now sure Shrike could of had the baddies execute the perfect ambush and yeah we would have all died but as you said before what fun would that be? Any GM worth his salt is going to give you atleast one if not more chances to see the ambush coming and therefore be able to do something about it ahead of time. Atleast if he stills wants to have players sitting around his table at the end of the night he will. On that note Shrike doesn't pull punches either, you play your hero smart or in character and he will make sure you have a fighting chance. By the same token you screw up and he'll bust out the thumb screws and lay into ya ! Now Outsider if you were to join us for a game you would be ok. Shrike is probably thee most impartial/honest/fair GM I have ever played with. He may not agree with you out of game but he won't take it out on you in game. If your one of those powergaming-loop-hole-looking-munchkin players then yeah you probably won't like Shrike's gaming style. Not because he'll take it out on you but because our group values concept characters over broken characters. We're always looking for good RPers BTW. I don't suppose you live in San Diego by chance do ya? Ok would love to say more but gotta run.

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers? OK I felt the need to chime in on this particular discussion. Ive been gaming with Shrike for almost ten years now (sheesh where does the time go ). I don't number crunch or analyse game mechanics like he does, but I do know he is very good at it and it almost always comes fair and consistent for everyone at the table. I've just learned to trust his judgement in all things gaming pretty much. Now having said that I can speak from experience on this particular subject. Two of the three example heroes used here happen to be my characters and were run simultaneously. I can tell you this that Kjar was not ever at anymore of a disadvantage then his fellow adventurers were. If anything he was nearly a pivotal part in every battle because of his magic and the power framework it was built on. He used his magic in nearly every RPing session and certainly in the combat sessions. Often times he was doing things when no one else was simply because he could. All I'm saying is that the heroes were all balanced out and Kjar held his own with the best of the warriors if not outright out shining them. Yes some of this does come down to the players behind the characters but you can't account for that anyways. Also as was mentioned earlier this only pertains to Shrike's campaign so take it for what its worth. Even in a S&S campaign though a player should be able to play a wizard/sorcerer if he/she wants to and still be able to keep up with the warriors IMO. It's totally doable, you just need to work at it, and if all else fails summon forth the many and varied talents posting on these fine boards for help!

Re: Who is Mister Mayhem? Just wanted to elaborate on the "Who made BlackJack?" comment. Killer Shrike created the character. It was/is Dan Simmon's character. He had the initial inspiration for it and gave over his original draft to Killer Shrike who after some suggestions from OddHat, Dan, and maybe one suggestion from me created that version of BlackJack. He is a difficult character to play because everything is subtle about him but I'll tell you he is a major addition to the group. Killer Shrike has a knack for taking players characters and tweaking them into monsters. I think he has a tranform power :20D6 Major Transform any PC design into monsterously effective PC. You should see some of his villains on his website http://www.killershrike.com.

Hi Steve, Ok Force Field Hero has the adder protects carried items. He also has the means to lift one or more hexes of ground and move around freely with it. For our purposes we'll say the ground has five DEF, five BODY and our hero has picked up four hexes worth. The FF in question provides 15PD/15ED. Does the ground count as being "carried" or would this be treated as a "grab"? If someone shoots it and it does count as being carried, and the remaining damage of BODY after the FF is subtracted does not penetrate the DEF of the ground, does this stop all the STUN as well? Is this a fair use of the power or blatantly abusive, as you basically get a force wall for free?

Re: [Magic System Comparison] Well I can't really take any credit for these little nuggets of goody goodness. 99% of them are Shrike's work and not mine. He bounces them off me for opinions and what not but thats about the extent of my contribution. How he does it or where he gets it from I have no idea...personally I think he's made pacts with dark powers. The rational I believe was because those spells in particular are pretty low level. When applying charges there comes a point when you might just as well make the charge a century long because it doesnt affect the points anymore then if it was a day long. So why not? As for the Metal Body not being resistant, I cant find the spell right at this moment. I suspect though that the "transform" part is merely SFX of the spell and it actually gives you armor 18PD/18ED, in which case armor is automatically resistant. I could be wrong though, its been known to happen

Re: [Magic System Comparison] Another great thing about all these different magic systems are that they could/do allow a veteran/novice GM many different options for themselves and their players. Ive been playing HEROES since 4th ed, which admittedly isnt as long as some/most of the folks on here. Using a VPP to do all the magic systems may work for some people but the VPP sure isn't for everyone. I had a character with one who is probably my all time favorite character I ever had but I did learn a VPP is a lot of book keeping when done correctly. When Shrike and I got a new batch of gamers interested in HEROES and in particular fantasy we wanted to show them HEROES in all its glory. I volunteered to play a mage but knew I wasn't comfy with another VPP. Shrike agreed and together we created Kjar Kvaresen. Shrike was making a sorcerer magic system anyways, Kjar just fit the bill. I personally like that system alot. Having all the spell levels on charges makes it much much easier to track what spells I have left and I know exactly what they do. I don't have to do any on the fly calculations and Shrike doesn't have to pull out his hair in frustration . Anyhoo all these magic systems should make it easier for everyone ,GM and player alike to find something they like, can play effectively , and most importantly is balanced for the game.

Re: The great armour race... Also, you could let people buy the 7 pt version of Deadly Blow as "Any HtH, Only Vs Combat Luck" or "Any Ranged, Only Vs Combat Luck". Ta-da; instant parity.

Re: The great armour race... Yeah Rob I can see how this would be frustrating. One of the great things about the HERO system (among many) is it always allows a GM and the players a way to beat X with Y, Z or any of the other 23 letters in the alphabet. Try using AVLDs or NNDs or drains, entangles, AP or penetrating, find weakness, or even Change enviroment powers. I dont know if that will help you but but I hope it does. I also think putting them in situations where it doesnt matter how much death and destruction they can cause wont solve the problem is a great idea. They'll wish they dumped those points somewhere else more uselful. I play in Shrike's game right now and we have the same issues. We have a lotta new players to the HERO system and they are all stuck on the "I need more DEX, DEF, and SPD" wagon. In our last session we had a rare opportunity to spend up nine XP (if a player had nine available). Out of the four players only one really did need more SPD and so bought one more point, and another one was able to be persuaded to spend her points on far more useful things. The other two continue to buy DEX,SPD, DEF, and CLs with something their already better then average at to begin with. Meanwhile the other characters in the group are far more effective then them in most any other situation and combat as well because they have the abilities to do other things then just hit and hit first and oh yeah take a hit. Their pretty boring characters overall. Shrike and I even attemped to show them you dont need all that stuff to be a dangerous warrior in the HERO system. Yeah it helps but its not required by any means. My fighter in the group only has an 11 DEX and a 3 SPD, and he's the one guy they all fear. It so far has been all for naught though, they just don't get it. Whaddya gonna do right? In Shrike's game being a bad ass killer has some advantages of course but 98% of the time that alone is not enough. He puts us in situations where you need more then to be a deadly fighter. I hope your able to get your players to see the light.

OMG!!! Wormhole...You have characters capable of "grilling" Menton until he talks?! Zoiks!!! The rest of those bums you listed wouldn't bother my hero but I'd steer clear of Menton unless he really was the culprit. Then I'd call in my teammates for back up.

I was in Shrikes original group that he converted from AD&D 2e to the HERO System and have played in most of his "GreyHERO" Games over the last 8 years as well as other campaigns both with and without the HERO System. In fact we just started a new Fantasy campaign today and it looks like it will be really cool. The whole points to level thing is generally only used to convert characters into the HERO System for background material, or on the off chance somebody has a burning desire to model their D&D character in the HERO System rather than design a new character straight in the HERO System (Shrike's recommended approach is to start with a clean slate). However, there have been some players fresh from D&D who really just dont get the their relative strength via character points, and the ability to approximate it to a level really does seem to help them. Eventually, if they keep playing the HERO System they catch on, but it helps get some people past their initial hesitance. Just my $.02

Shrike has a bunch of options for handling this, though he doesnt actually use most of them: http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/GreyHEROContent/ArcaneMagic.shtml

Im sorry guys but is it just me or does Ultivac sound like one of those multi-purpose vacuum cleaners we see sometimes on those infommercials?

Our current CHAMPIONS campaign actually is an alternate earth kinda deal. The original one we started out in was a cyberpunk-ish-batman-beyond kinda game. We got in way over our heads on our second mission and things were getting more and more dangerous for us, near death incidents and all that crazy stuff. The players with the exception of me wanted to end that game before it ended them, so the GM (killer Shrike) graciously chalked it up to a learning experience for them and we started anew in the current campaign were somethings were similar but it was all very much different. Aside from that I always loved the WHAT IF title done by Marvel comics, some of the stories in those comics were fantastic. They almost always made me wish their version of events were what really happened.

Well I must agree that Lord Liaden's ideas are very good and if our group were up and running CHAMPIONS right now that would be a great way to run Mechanon. Sadly I seem to be in the minority in our group for wanting to play supers. Its ironic too because I used to be one of the biggest advocates against playing in that genre, funny how the tables turn. I love the supers setting more then I thought I would. Oh well, as things stand for our team the Millenial Men, Ol Mechanon wouldn't give us that much trouble himself once we got through his nefarious schemes to duke it out with him. Heck one or two of our members could take Mechanon singlehandedly. Our only real trouble would be stopping his plans, not him. If the truth be told I never liked Mechanon, just seemed kinda dumb to me as he was written in 4th and 5th edition, but hey I'm sure others love him, or love to hate him:D . As far as I know Killer Shrike(our usual GM) doesn't have an origin for Mechanon. He doesn't like him as a villain all that much either

Usable as Attack might help.....