Markdoc

Re: Facing and Passing PER rolls are listed as typically being half phase actions near the bottom of 6E2 18. It says "Most PER rolls" which I interpret two ways. 1) If you are examining something really carefully, it's going to take more than a half phase. 2) If it's something that you might notice without actively searching for it (ie: you are running - do you hear the door open behind you? Do you notice the light spilling out?) then it's a no time thing. But typically, in my games, to look long enough to get a PER roll, a half-phase is enough and required. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing Sounds reasonable: I agree that mixed mode movement is relatively unusual. Run and jump is the commonest for our games. If the drain targets special effects, then yes, if not, then no. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing It took me less time than a minute, by a substantial amount. It's no more complicated than calculating damage from a hit (and since there's no dice to count, takes less time). cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing

Re: Facing and Passing Looking at that, there's nothing that suggests the movement has to be sequential - and as we have noted, some actions (like looking down a passage) can be performed without preventing further movement. So it doesn't affect our interposing examples, which only require a single movement type and no phase-ending actions. On the other hand, as noted above, changing modes of movement requires changing powers (something I had not thought of), which can only be done at the end of a half phase action, so I agree, by RAW, run-jump-run is not possible. That's pretty dumb, so I will officially add a houserule though I doubt it will see much use. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing I'd agree that looking down a corridor is a "takes no time" action - as such it can be performed without restricting continued movement. That however is a glance, not a detailed examination. As for holding an action, I generally only allow that in combat time. A guard can't be on hair trigger alert for more than some minutes, let alone hours or days, except in extraordinary circumstances. He can be watchful, but not at the split-second reaction time that a held action implies.

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions

Re: Facing and Passing This is one of those awkward artifacts of speed chart and movement, which can occur under certain settings.* Acceleration is no longer instantaneous, but it wouldn't affect the outcome in this particular case, since both parties have plenty of time to get to full speed. In such a case I'd allow the attack on segment 3: after all the attacker has paid for his running and should get the appropriate benefit. But unless there were other factors which could affect the outcome, I would not bother to run this in stop motion: I'd just note that the pursuer can put on a burst of speed that lets him get one attack (as a move through/by) before the quarry pulls away from him. In other words, quarry is a faster runner, but pursuer - in this instance - has an edge in reaction. It doesn't bother me too much because it is very context dependant, and context - even in the real world - affects outcomes. Of course if quarry is smart, and just wants to get away, he'll switch to non-combat running in segment 2, and then he's away free. Pursuer can match his speed (briefly) by also going non-combat, but that ruins his chances of landing a hit. cheers, Mark *Note: it wouldn't happen in my game, but that's because I have abolished the speed chart, partly because of things like this. That however, is very definitely a house rule!

Re: Facing and Passing

Re: Facing and Passing Heh. I'll have to remember to take you up on that. The odds are pretty good that I'll be in and out of London a reasonable amount, since that's where corporate headquarters are. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing

Re: Facing and Passing

Re: Facing and Passing Sounds like a good plan! Had I but known ... I was in London last week - 4 days at a training class in Kensington (hard work, but interesting: we got to have Q&As with the CEO and several of the board. The Head of Research will certainly remember me, though I'm not sure if that's a net positive or not ), and then a long weekend with friends in Finchley (went to Whit's in Kensington and Petersham Nursery Cafe in .... well, Petersham: both can be recommended). cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing Part of the reason for our disagreement might be that we envisage (and play) combat quite differently. I don't see combat as people "clicking into place" on their action and then freezing there - in other words as a discrete series of "It's your DEX - act - now you are done". The rules, again caution against that approach. Combat and movement is supposed to be dynamic: it's only broken into segments to ease our dealing with it. So to take the example given, the knight states "I delay my action: if anyone approaches the princess I try and block their way, or cut them down if they get past me". He holds. The Orc states "I'm going to try and get past him and cover the Princess." In this situation the knight doesn't have to take a single step and then freeze in place. Since he has stated that he wants to hold an attack in reserve, he has a half move to play with - and he can distribute that half move over his phase as he sees fit. If he moves to one side to block the orc, and the orc moves further to one side to avoid him, he can continue his blocking movement - just as the orc can continue his circling movement. It's not like either of them takes a single movement action and then "freezes". Now I am decidedly uninterested in going to segment by segment movement. So what this means is that (as GM) I look at the movement available to the 2 characters and can see that if they have equivalent movement, the orc cannot get past the knight without either a) a moveby, which will trigger an attack from the knight, moving more than a half move, which means he cannot cover the princess, or c) moving through the knight's "hex" (which is going to require acrobatics or physically moving him). I treat chases the same way. Do you really envisage one party racing ahead of the other and then freezing in place, while the pursuer suddenly zooms up to him? As GM, I simply look at speed and phases, and we assume that either the fleeing person escapes because he's faster, or the pursuing person is close enough to attack on his phase, because he's faster. I certainly don't assume some sort of weird elastic springing together and then apart again, as each person moves, nor do I assume that characters do all of their actions in a fraction of second and then freeze irrevocably in place until their next phase. Not combat reach - a person with a spear can have a combat reach of 2 metres to either side, and he can't impede movement through that space except by stabbing, which is a simple attack. He can't "block" movement. In terms of physical space, a "hex" - a space 1M in radius around a human size target seems reasonable. Within that space, relatively minimal movement will allow the defender to impose a physical barrier to movement (be it shoulder, shield, torso, whatever). An attacker should be able to move through that space - they do so in real life, after all - but it becomes an opposed action at that point, whether it is strength, acrobatics or even a feint, that allows it. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing

Re: D&D 4E Style Minions The initial suggestion - make them low STUN and BOD - seems to me to be the best. In my games, minions, by definition are not kamikazes who fight to the death: if they get KO'ed, they don't spring to their feet as soon as they get a recovery and get back into the fight. They either feign death, lie around moaning, or, if possible, creep away. From the player's point of view, it doesn't actually matter if they are surrounded by 20 corpses or 20 unconscious bodies, who will flee if/when they recover. Either way, the enemy is defeated and the ground is littered with bodies. The reason I don't like tweaking the rules to generate minions, is that it encourages the players to go for twinky low-cost builds, which devastate vast swathes of minions, but (for example) can't damage a normal house door and leave an angry dog largely unscathed. You get the sort of logic trap where the PCs confront a mob of armed guards and then go "Watch out, one of them's got a housecat!". You also get the rather silly situation where a bunch of housewives armed with fish-scalers are more or less as threatening as the king's guard, all clad in plate harness. Essentially, by making one-hit wonders, you are compressing the bottom of the scale so that the leap from minion to "ordinary soldier" is orders of magnitude. The real trick to making fall-down-minions is (in addition to low STUN and low BOD) low DCV and low defences do that PCs can (with some confidence) use tricks like called shot, multiattack, or area effect attacks to drop them in swathes. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing Allowing an attack (outside the normal sequence of actions) would certainly be a rules change, but it's not what I am advocating or what I'd want to see. What I was suggesting is that that one character cannot move through the space actually occupied by another character, without either forcing him out of the way or somehow dodging over/past. So in other words, for orc to get to the princess, the orc has to go around the knight or knock him out of the way: he can't actually go through him. That might seem like it's patently obvious (it certainly does to me), but it is not explicitly stated anywhere in the rules. Hence the "house rule" tag. The bit about using acrobatics to bypass an obstacle is already in the rules, and has already been mentioned in the thread - I'm just assuming that "obstacles" includes people who don't want to let you pass. cheers, Mark

Re: TUALA MORN -- Interested In More Stuff?

Re: TUALA MORN -- Interested In More Stuff?

Re: Facing and Passing

Re: Facing and Passing If you are committed to defend the object, delay. In other words, defend, don't attack. Incidentally, this is the very first lesson drilled into bodyguards in the real world. Actually there are three methods: block, dive for cover and "threaten" or 4, if you are using interpose as well. It is true that there is no pre-built method to make your target harder to hit (apart from standing in the way and thus providing cover) while still being able to attack, but that's both realistic and IMO, reasonable. If those don't do it for you, this is Hero, so of course, you could always build such a power/talent (indeed, I did so myself for a group called the Swan knights, who were royal bodyguards), but I don't see a lack in the basic rules. cheers, Mark

Re: Facing and Passing I think this is another situation where our long experience with D&D encourages us to model D&D, rather than reality (real or cinematic). Ignoring knights, orcs and princesses for now, let's look at the assumptions. 1. Is it possible to pass an attacker without consequences? Real life experience says no, if he is attempting to block you, but a definite yes, absolutely, if he commits to an attack and misses. The D&D idea that you suddenly get back on balance and get a freebie attack if someone passes you does not square with real life. In real life, if you are fast and your opponents are too eager, it really is possible to waltz past several defenders, without them being able to stop you. I've not only seen it done, and done it myself, but drawing an opponent out so that you can move past them, is a basic tactic taught in both armed and unarmed martial arts. 2. Do we need new mechanisms to simulate defending? So far, I haven't seen anything in this thread that suggests we do. Basically if you are "bodyguarding" you have several options (I'm not going to comment on interpose, as I don't have the APG). You can delay until the attacker commits to an attack and either block or counter-attack. You can attack, in an attempt to put your opponent down. You can delay and use dive for cover to block an attack on your target (6E2 87). All of these are pretty realistic: if your opponent is prepared to take a hit to go after the person you are defending, it is - in real life - very, very hard to stop him, unless you kill/KO/Stun him on the way in. It gets harder if you have several opponents. With regard to multiattack, you can delay and go after them with multiattack (to answer the earlier question, no, your targets do not have to be together, and yes, you can attack each of them, even if they move on different DEX values (6E2 78). If they attack on different segments or phases, though, you are out of luck:() You can likewise block multiple attacks - all you need to do is be within reach of the target, not necessarily the attacker (6E2 58). Put all that together with the rules on facing: specifically "The opponent might get the bonus if the character is distracted (for example, if he’s already fighting one foe who’s in front of him)..." (6E2 50) and I think we have all we need (at least this has never been an issue in my games, principally because before 6E, the rule about having an attacker right behind you was houseruled so that it was the same as the rules suggested now in 6E). Basically, my interpretation of this is that you cannot "get behind" someone by simply moving (or even being) behind them ... unless they are doing something that prevents them responding. That something could be fighting another person - for example, trying to stab a princess - being hindered in your movement, etc. This is open to interpretation, since the rules say the attacker "might" get the bonus if his opponent is "distracted", but in my book, saying you intend to ignore one active opponent to go after another target that exposes your flank or rear certainly qualifies. So in the examples given: Knight facing orc, cowering princess behind. Option 1. Knight attacks ... he's being reckless and gambling all on being able to put the orc down. If he succeeds, all well and good. If he fails, he has opened the princess up to attack. My opinion? Realistic and genre-consistent. Option 2. Knight delays until the orc attacks ... he's being cautious and protecting his charge. If the orc does not attack, you get a standoff: that could be good, or bad, depending on who's expecting reinforcements. If the orc attacks, he can choose to block the attack, or wait until the orc has turned his back on him to go after the princess and then whack him while the orc is at 1/2 DCV: this would probably be a good time for a multiattack. The orc might get through, but probably not. My opinion? Realistic and genre-consistent. Things get tougher if the knight is facing three orcs: they can - if sufficiently organised, and tactically skilled - choose to draw him out by attacking from different directions and then one of them attacks the princess while the other two tackle him, and there's not much he can do about it. He can block all their attacks, but the odds are not in his favour. His best bet is to get the princess into a corner so that to get to her, the orcs have to go past him, and concentrate on blocking and attacking, if he has phases to burn. However, in my opinion this is also realistic and genre consistent. Basically, as described, to defend effectively, you have to have an action to respond. If an opponent chooses to expose his flank or rear to you, and you have a reserved action, you get to attack at an advantage. Add that to the optional guarding an area rule (6E2 128), and do we need more? Is there anything I've missed here? cheers, Mark

Re: Planetary Resources

Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout? Another possibility is the Steyr weapons system. The Steyr AUG is pretty popular with users and has seen plenty of use over the last 30 years: the Aussies have just decided to go with the updated Steyr as their new core weapon. Back in the day, there was interest in the modular approach Steyr used: in many ways, it was a forerunner of the now-defunct US XM28 program, and it was certainly an inspiration. Add to that the fact that it looks "different" and it should have the desired effect. cheers, Mark

Re: "Realistic" gun damage Ah. I have the 5th edition Equipment guide, so I'd never seen this. In that case, I propose a really simple - and yet strangely necessary - solution. Rewrite the black powder weapon damages because they are simply way out of whack with everything else in the system. In reality, having a big, relatively slow .7 ball is no more damaging (actually somewhat less) than a 9 mm round that has a much higher velocity. Momentum is nice, but it only carries you so far. If you drop black powder weapons by 6DC, you should get something that's reasonable all round. cheers, Mark