Vulcan

Re: Favorite Anti-Brick tricks? Which I just found out my current character doesn't have...

Re: As Thick as a Brick (brick fan thread) Ah, the "Forbidden Planet" build!

Re: Darth Vader vs. The Hulk As much as I like Star Wars, being able to fight at FTL speeds gives the victory to the Star Trek ships, period. And of course Spider Man can beat Firelord. It's his name on the title of the comic! Now back to your regularly scheduled implausable match-up.

Re: Darth Vader vs. The Hulk Which just tells me it's the Hulk has been ridiculously poorly written. Possibly even worse than the 'planet-pushing' Superman.

Re: Favorite Anti-Brick tricks? The best anti-brick trick is a well-played martial artist. Matial throw, dodge, and block on a well-made and well-played martial artist will beat many bricks every time. And when the 'big' brick ("He doesn't actually have growth, he's just 6'10" tall...) picks up a car to smash you with, dive for cover between his legs! And give him a kick where it'll do the most good next phase!

Re: Darth Vader vs. The Hulk With Vader watching over his shoulder, the tractor-beam officer had better hope so!

Re: Darth Vader vs. The Hulk That's why the tractor beam holds him just outside the focusing point...

Re: Darth Vader vs. The Hulk There is only one way I see Vader beating the Hulk. After expending numerous minions and reccon assets scouting the target, Vader borrows the Death Star from the Emperor. They blow up the planet, catch the Hulk in a tractor beam, set him at the focus point for the superlaser, and fire it again. If that doesn't do it, keep the tractor beam on and set course for Kessel. Drop the Hulk into the Maw (a cluster of black holes). But really, that's a case of the Empire beating the Hulk, not Vader per se.

Re: Ditching PS12 And without PS12, when would END Reserves recover? Seriously, without PS12 Recoveries, character builds alter enormously. It no longer becomes profitable to have a high REC, so REC becomes the automatic buyback stat. END Reserves proliferate, as do characters with HUGE amounts of END. And the smart players just buy everything 0 END, except for the 'last ditch' x10 END attack, which is used once at the beginning of the fight to soften up the opposition. I don't see that as an improvement myself.

Re: The power of Recovery Oh, yes, Markdoc, you are sooooo right. I had a brick with 20 PD, 50% Physical Reduction, and a 30 CON and REC. I specialized in fighting other bricks, who just couldn't hit him hard enough fast enough to put him out. Energy projectors, on the other hand, blasted against a 20 ED and had a bit easier time of it...

Re: The power of Recovery Yes, a high (30+) REC character can be a very frustrating foe to fight. You've almost got him out, then here comes PS-12 and he's halfway back to full...

Re: Who was WWII's most important leader?

Re: 6th Edition WAGs Overpaid.

Re: The power of Recovery Oh yeah, a REALLY high REC can be a lifesaver in a fight. Bricks can be very hard to keep down because they tend to have higher REC than most other characters (High base REC from STR and CON, and they usually buy more). Overdrive Energy Projectors (with extra dice of EB at x10 END) are also kinda hard to beat down as well, because the points they saved on the extra dice of EB go straight into REC.

Re: Darth Vader vs. The Hulk Empire Strikes back, 23:30. Just after General Covell tells Vader about the shields protecting the Rebel base on Hoth, we have the following scene. Vader's chair turns away from the camera toa large viewscreen. Viewscreen activates, showing Admirals Ozzel and Piet. Ozzel turns to face the viewscreen pickup and says, "Vader, the fleet has moved out of lightspeed and we are preparing to awk!" "You have failed me for the last time, Admiral." And given that the Super class Star Destroyers were measured in kilometers, we are likely looking at a good, long range there. As much as I want Vader to win this, I've got to agree with you here though. I think Vader is the Coolest Villian Ever - even Khan Noonian Singh takes second place to Vader (at least before taking the prequels into account - man were they disappointing). But the Hulk, however boring, is still a hero, and a powerhouse hero to boot. And the heros always win.

Re: Who was WWII's most important leader? Great analysis, Lawnmower. Now what's your take on a Allied offensive - say, into the Ruhr, the main German indutrial area at the time - in 1939 when the best of the German forces were in Poland?

Re: Mental Martial Arts Madness? I always thought ranged martial arts were madness. Mental martial arts?

Re: A limitation that does not limit True to a point. But it's not really as bad as making the game unplayable. Because in many games, certain limitations are a lot less limiting, and should be a lot less of a limitation. Booster A (no mutants on team, including Booster) likely gets a -1.5 to -2 limitation because there are going to be lots of situations where the power won't work at all. Booster E (whole team is mutants) gets a -1/4 to -1/2 (if the GM is generous) becase there are going to be lots of situations where the power will work. Compromising and making the 'only works on mutants' limitation a -1 takes too much from Booser A, and gives too much to Booster E, in my opinion.

Re: A limitation that does not limit Buying the 'compensating power' becomes the disadvantage, because he's spent points on a 'concept power' and no longer has those points available for use on 'useful powers.' He should get the full 25 points for Blindness.

Re: Who was WWII's most important leader? That is a point that is often neglected in books about WWII. The Germans were outnumbered pretty much through the entire war! For example, the German forces that invaded France were outnumbered heavily overall. They won by gathering thier forces and hitting France where their troops were not! This kind of thing persisted througout the war, the Germans were very good at getting the most out of their troops by concetrating them at the point of decision. As far as people who would change the course of the war... Give France a commanding General who realized how easily the Maginot Line could be bypassed. He would have left a cadre force to hold the line, kept his main force concntrated and well back as a mobile reserve, and when the Nazis steamrolled the Low Coutries, he could have smashed them head-on in nothern France. The Germans were outnumbered that badly in theater at the time. Of course, if the French commanding General had a pair, he would have attacked into Germany as soon as war was declared. Since Germany had the cream of their forces in Poland at the time, the war would have ended virtually immeditately...

Re: WW2 metahuman emergence. Dark Champions gives several skill packages for military personnel (as well as spies, cops, and what-not). Granted, they are based on modern military training so they might be a bit of overkill for WWII soldiers. But 50+50 might be a bit low for metahuman soldiers; 75+75 would be better (in my opinion). What you could do is have them start the game at 50+50 normals (which makes them a pretty elite group), and then get a little too close to a experemental nuclear project... Then give them their last 50 points and tell them to come up with 25 more points in Disads.

Re: Who was WWII's most important leader? That is a very good point. Neither Japan nor Germany had enough of a population to really go about conquering the world - individually, or even together. And both would have had real trouble projecting enough power across the oceans to conquer America. (Germany couldn't manage to project enough power to conquer England, less than 90 air-miles away!) Realistically? If Zhokov had failed/been killed, the USSR could very well have fallen. Russia, on the other hand, would have endured, and quite possibly risen from the ashed later on. Granted, all the border nations would have split off as soon as the central government ceased to function. But the real impact of the loss of Zhukov would be a horrendous increase in the casualties taken by America and England in the European campaigns. The Russian campaign took a vast number of German troops - pretty much all of their best units, thinking about it - and had those troops not been fighting Russia in the east, they would have been in France counterattacking our troops...

Re: What is Your Favorite Item? Out of curiousity, how would one buy a Portable Hole in HEROS?

Re: What is Your Favorite Item? One of my favorite fantasy RPG items has always been the Portable Hole. And our group came up with some truly innovative ideas for it. One of our players came up with the idea of setting a wooden liner into one, so he could just drop stuff into it without worrying about a sharp object punturing the fabric of the Hole. And from this, we developed... The Organized Hole, with a ladder and shelves attached to the wooden liner. The Portable Library, with several sets of shelves that collapsed together and a winch to raise it up out of the hole. The Portable Alchemy lab, similar to the library but with racks of glassware and worktables instead. (This spawned a whole series of 'Portable Workstations' for various skills.) The Portable Watchtower, which was winched out in four sections, giving a 40' high watchtower for whoever was on guard to use at night. And then my 3'6" halfling came up with the best one (in my less-than-humble opinion, anyway). In the 6' diameter, 10' deep - less 4" for a really sturdy liner - volume, he built a two storey apartment, complete with a two-piece camoflage lid, sitting room and (small) library, comfy chair, four-poster King Sized (relative to a halfling, anyway) bed, and wall-to wall carpet. No sleeping out in the wilds for this halfling!

Re: World War II era: Dark Champions or Pulp Hero? (Getting off topic here) Being a stickler for detail when it comes to guns, I note that the BAR was designated the M1918 for the year the Army first started issuing it. And it served through 'til the beginning of the Vietnam War. Only the M2 .50 cal. (developed early in WWI and still in use today) and the M1911 (which was retired in the 1980's) have had longer service records. Truly an excellent weapon, far superior to the 5.56mm POS being issued today (granted, in my opinion anyway).