Balabanto

Re: Can be used as... Because then you get a skill that is fully invisible and has insane range for free. How do you dodge it? To represent this, use stretching that does not cross intervening space so that normal hth rules apply.

Re: Looks more dangerous than he really is. Give him a high PRE score, but make the rest of his stats mediocre.

Re: Can be used as... To respond to Doc's comment in quotations, let me only say this. There is a mistake that many people make with Hero System that grossly impedes their judgement. Mastering chargen will make you a powerful or flexible character, but it doesn't necessarily make you a competent one. Nothing in Hero replaces total mastery of the combat rules. Combat results can't be predicted with 100 percent certainty ever IF everyone plays at the same tactical and social level. Yesterday I set up a group of villains against Millennium Guard, the most powerful superhero team in my game world. Their leader is currently on hiatus. Well, this meant the other team had better teamwork, and even though they weren't as strong, as fast, or as powerful, they managed to seriously put the hurt on them because their teamwork was superior. They captured ONE guy and a few agents. That was it. It was way less than I was expecting. Next time they throw down with these guys, they'll probably use different tactics, and we'll see how that plays out. Mastery of the combat rules is far more important than how characters are built, designed, or how complicated they are. This is why I disagree with many people about the power level of characters in the game, and some, but not all of the rule change advancements.

Re: Help with Golden Age scenario The best part is an army of guys with spears chasing the PCs and shouting a horribly mispronounced version of his name in "Junglespeak."

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares He was really drunk and ate too much beans one day, John, the Farter Warlord of Mars ---------------------------------- He could talk to the animals until he was transported. Doctor Doolittle, Warlord of Mars ----------------------------------------------------- She was assembled from meat parts only to become drastically lonely on another planet, Bride of Frankenstein, Warlord of Mars ------------------------------------------ And now, other genre crossover nightmares Hunger Games of Death starring Bruce Lee in a dress Doctor Strangelove in Charlotte's Web The Lion, the Witch, and Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory

Re: Help with Golden Age scenario A statue of one of the PCs, magically sent back in time from a future adventure! The natives of the island worship him as a god, only when they discover he's only human, they try to sacrifice him to return him to the sky!

Re: King of the Mountain Reviewed at RPG.net Lorenzo would win in a fight. He's got powers that pretty much guarantee victory, not to mention an endless slew of energy bolts.

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren Sharon works with me when I need a psychiatric expert. I'll be giving her a mental workout over the next few years.

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren Once again, I recommend Sharon Packer's "Superheroes and Superegoes, Analyzing the Minds Behind the Masks" for valuble information on comics, the war, and what it meant as regards Superheroes.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15528.phtml I hope this will inspire people to take a look at this if they haven't already.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Secondary Weapons have begun. Then it's heavy weapons, then that whole section gets sent to Dave. This will be followed by maps and object defense tables. Then adventure text. Hopefully, I should be done by the end of June.

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren In my home game, I addressed it by limiting the overall number of superbeings prior to the war, and having the end of the war be the trigger for more. If there's only maybe 50 to 100 guys with real powers, there's a significant issue with sending them into risky situations. Sure, they'll easily escape from most prisons, etc, but resource management (and who has how many) tends to dictate how those people are used. Also, lack of transportation makes a big difference. It takes eight to ten hours to cross the Atlantic in a plane in those days. Under those conditions, intelligence operatives and spies can really put a crimp in your bonnet as far as mobilization times. When you're attacking, it's a lot harder to get to where you're going than if you're defending, and pretty much from 1942 on, the Germans were defending. If teleportation and other such abilities are rare, or come with significant hazards, then you face the prospect of always going in with your enemies alerted to your presence and having to fight your Nazi counterparts. This is all great, IF you can win, but when superheroes are a limited resource, it may be tactically safer for General Eisenhower not to field them.

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren That depends on the power level of the game. If the power level of the superbeings hasn't changed between "Then and Now", then superheroes can probably stop a tank shell with ease.

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren As much as punching Hitler in the face is an immediate consequence, I'm more thinking about Golden Age characters getting their first look at a Concentration Camp and the "Oh, my god" moment where they just don't know what to do. If you've read the accounts of the liberation of Concentration Camps, there should never be a moment in any Golden Age campaign that equals this for the sheer audacity of evil. This stuff stays with people.

Re: Golden Age Characters by Darren Hmm. "Transform into Target obeys my Every Command?" I think it's a great idea, but I think the 6th edition rules may be your enemy here as far as that's concerned. The issues are the cheapness of area effect vs. the amount of power (and power defense) available to Golden Age characters. My only worry is that this is too cheap. 2d6 of 8m area transform runs 45 points. 16m runs 52. In half a turn, most Golden Age characters are done. A 16m area is pretty large, and if you're running things on a battlemap, that's a sizable portion of it. If you consider that most Golden Age characters might have SPD in the 3-5 range, however, you may be able to prolong combat enough to get people to put a stop to a nasty power like that, but I don't know the ranges you selected or what the collective active costs are. The other issue with the power is NOT an issue in the Golden Age, but more with Golden Age Updates to the more modern world of superheroes. I'm far more concerned with "Shield of Normals" in the modern world of superheroes than I would be in the Golden Age. In this case, Genre is your friend. You won't find a lot of Golden Age villains creating an army of brainwashed slaves, although in the pulps, this was standard practice. (The Shadow vs. The Voodoo Master stands out in particular) This leads to another question that I can't answer, which is "How much 'out of the pulps?' IS Golden Age Champions?" If it's more rather than less, you have less of a design problem. If it's less rather than more, you have more of a design problem. The easiest way out of this is just to assume that you can't build a machine of any size that works on more than one guy at once. (It's the Golden Age, they should have to strap the target to a table and shoot him with a weird ray for a few hours to achieve the effect. At the end of the plot, you can have the guy try and climb a radio tower and hook a massive device into it if that's the resolution.) Another question is "How sanitized is the Golden Age you're creating?" Again, I don't know. If it's more 40's than 30's, you face one set of obstacles, that of "sanitizing war." If it's not as sanitized, you face a different problem of "How did Superheroes deal with the consequences of what Hitler did, and what was the end result?" I am not positing any solutions here, or trying to rain on Darren's parade, but it occurs me that these issues might need to be thought about, regardless of the end result.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update Primary Weapons are complete! On to secondary weapons! This took a little longer than expected. Corporate promoted my manager, but not me, and so I've been working a little more than usual for this time of year.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares When trouble beckons, our Marvel hero puts on his greaves and boots, and mounts his steed secretly from his gay lover's boudoir while he sings the body electric! The Black Knight is "Dane Walt Whitman!"

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains Actually, no one would have the bomb. There would be no actual threat whatsoever. In my game world, there's total nuclear disarmament. Why? Because after years of atomic threats (And a supervillain realizing this was a good idea and mind controlling some key personnel), people realized "Holy crap! Tons of radiation creates supervillains! We can't nuke people! We'll give the enemy thousands of mean and angry superbeings." If you have no WWII, you have no arms race either. It's likely that most planes would still fly by propellers, and that there would be no Israel. Everyone would still be tacitly racist at best, and openly racist at worst. (This is key, actually.) Superheroes probably wouldn't be tacitly racist, but their DNPCs, etc might be. Americans still have separate black and white bathrooms. There's a lot of stuff you have to pay attention to.

Re: How do you handle Moments of Mastery/ Dramatic Comebacks? I let the dice fall where they may. My games are based around superhero teams rather than individuals, and are far more "Mighty Heroes United as a Team" (Avengers) than "World's seven most powerful individuals." (Justice League) It's okay to lose. That's part of the genre, too. We've lost sight of that over the years.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Abbot and Costello Meet the Hitchhiker Doctor Seuss and the Sorcerer's Stone Gilligan's Monster Island

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Scooped by Can of Whupass again.

Re: Sun Koh, the Nazi Doc Savage. Character and links. I think it is VERY likely that Siegel and Shuster knew of this character and his stories when they were creating Superman.

Re: Imaginary Friends Update The last two sheets in the adventure are done. Now it's on to a big lot of weapons for the organization. I estimate this should take about 20 days, and then I can do maps. I'll get this one out by gencon if it kills me.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Yeah. It was me.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Anthony Bourdain's Man vs. Food: The Blob The Last Starfighter Behind the Green Door Ganges Riverdance Hudson Riverdance (There's a video of this one out there somewhere. It's frighteningly funny) Little Orphan Annie, Get Your Gun Hoosiers: The Stars are Right Three Brokeback Musketeers (Someone in porn may actually already have made this movie.)