Doc Democracy

Re: So how did you guys learn the system? I remember picking up the first edition. I had played AD&D and Runequest and we had a club at school. I remember some of the younger boys asking me to run superheroes and I went to Glasgow and picked up Champions. I read through the book and it was definitely NOT love at first sight. It horrified the fledgling gamer in me and the book sat in my room for almost two years before the constant nagging to run a game became almost impossible to ignore. It was with some trepidation that I put together the first characters - a martial artist and a growth based brick. I fought them on the hex map provided in the box set. It was difficult but I slowly got to grips with the things that were important. I then went and made some characters with the players. There were four of them and the characters they made were horribly designed but the assets of the system shone through. When Black Ninja was kicked through the walls of the house next to the bank by Titan (I made use of the original characters as villains) the player was resigned to writing up a new character. When I told him that Black Ninja shook his head, felt a bit shaken by the experience but both STUN and BODY were above zero and so he could act, it immediately FELT like superheroes... That presaged a four year campaign. All of the characters played that day survived through most of that time, but I found that I had to be very flexible in allowing those characters to be re-designed several times as we better understood the rules and as supplements CHAMPIONS II and III added cool stuff. I cannot imagine the horror of approaching today's game when I can remember my incomprehension at that first slim volume! Doc

Re: HERO Dice App for Android - know one? So it is a DOJ thing. Long as I know it is nothing dodgy. Doc

Re: HERO Dice App for Android - know one? I have no idea. Your original post has a link where I indicated in the quote - if you put the cursor over that text you see it. I am sure I have no special set up in my browser.... Doc

Re: HERO Dice App for Android - know one? Shopping link added by SkimWords?? I thought Andy was giving me an interesting link about his particular phone but instead go to Ebay?? Is this a new board way of making money for DOJ, for Andy or just a new type of spam???? Doc

Re: Exploding Armor Good point Lord Look Both Ways at Once. I had not looked at it with that perspective. I guess the switching a defensive power on and off again is an issue - would the explosion need a trigger so that it did not end the phase, it is an attack after all. If so, how does trigger work with this - is there a refractory period or does the user need to spend a phase setting the power again? I guess I could go RTFM but it is more fun asking people with a firmer grasp of this stuff. Doc

Re: Exploding Armor switch off - 0 phase switch on - 0 phase go do whatever you want the rest of the phase, no?

Re: Exploding Armor Hmm. So it is like a video game special effect where the added defensive capability comes with an explosion of lights, noise, etc, etc. This would be acceptable to me as a GM. The limitation is definitely on the armour - you can only use the explosion if you switch your armour off and on again but I do not see any limitations to that - those are 0 phase actions that you could do at any time with no detriment to the character - so the explosion is not limited as far as use goes. However, you cannot switch on your armour without the explosion taking place - thus, if fighting next to companions, you must subject them to detriment if you want the resistant defence. As such you are limited in your use of the armour and I think putting a linked limitation on the armour would be acceptable to me as a GM. Doc

Re: How does "Impenetrable" work?

Re: Exploding Armor Hmmm. let me see if I can get my head around this. The armour provides normal protection but it can be activated such that it provides resistant defence as well? However, when the resistant protection is switched on it causes an explosion around the character. Is that right? My question would be whether the discharge was immediate or whether it took time. Would the character be able to switch the resistance on and off at will thus causing explosions whenever he wanted or would there be a refractory period? For example, if the character caused an explosion on phase 2, when would he next be able to switch the armour off and on again to cause another explosion? If there is no refractory period, then I would say the explosion was linked to the armour, it can only caused through switching on the armour but that it was not worth a limitation as there is no real limitation on its use. Doc

Re: How does "Impenetrable" work? I will do the typical bloke thing - I have not read the manual but will make presumptions of how I think it should work given my HERO background. 1 - PD is high enough to block all damage. 2 - the attack is penetrating and so does a minimum of BODY rolled as STUN (so 10) 3 - 5 points of protection are impenetrable thereby reducing the damage to 5 STUN. You wanna argue about it? Doc

Re: Summoning a set of Magical Armor I'm with Hugh on this. The summon is all special effects of turning his powers on. If you purchase this on all your powers then the minute you use the powers you become the Hero ID - so it can be difficult to do stuff unless you want them to know that Simon Saint is The Templar... Doc

Re: Online Hero Games tools? Welcome to the HERO boards, Silvereagle. To talk about this stuff you really want to trawl round the right part of the forums - Other software and online resources here. There is a thread about Maptools which is a similar idea to Fantasy Grounds but open source and free (I think). Nolgroth is the local forum expert at that and started this thread to help other HERO players use it more easily.

Re: Hitting 'Til It Hurts *********BREAKING NEWS****************BREAKING NEWS******************** Sean Waters stops a conversation to discuss practicalities of suggestion! *********BREAKING NEWS****************BREAKING NEWS********************

Re: Costing Naked Adders That wasn't me but possibly my arch-nemesis!! I think I almost have to introduce that character as a villain in my next campaign! :) Doc

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy I think that Steve's point is exactly right. I think that HERO allows me to approximate the setting more closely than any comparable system beyond one that has been designed specifically for that setting. I say comparable as D&D and HERO are directly comparable they are very much a game that allows you to co-operatively produce a story. Neither of them is comparable to, for example, Heroquest which is a narrative system, far more along the lines of a guided storytelling. I think that I can do things with Heroquest that I just cannot with HERO (and vice versa). These provide very different play experiences. Doc

Re: Costing Naked Adders Nice build Lucius! I have a blind spot as far as adjustment powers go and I need to get around it because they are dashed useful in getting effects like this - specially when you use standard effect... My one query about this would be whether it requires two actions to teleport using the increased effect? Aid the teleport and then use the teleport?? Would it be better with a trigger, "any time teleport power used"?? Doc

Re: Costing Naked Adders Hmm. I would presume that, if Steve was happy for it to be discussed as a 'how to' that he is happy with the naked adder concept. Even if the core rules do not allow it, there is nothing that says you cannot try it to see how it works out balance wise for you. Anyway - Christopher's approach is a decent one, if you are thinking just about effecting the concept for a single character. However, that does not answer how you would, as a GM, build a magic item that provided a bonus to the teleportation effects of any character that happened to own it at the time. The concept of naked adders would appear to be the most obvious way to manage this. As for costing, I would do it exactly the same way as a naked advantage - you are effectively building points that will add to the value of the character. What you have though is the fact that you want an adder that would normally apply only to a single power to apply to several. I think that I would charge a x1/2 advantage on your naked adder to make it a generic adder rather than specific to any individual power. Other than that it would be a matter of working out the point cost (30*1.5=45) and then applying the limitations you have decided upon (including I presume a focus limitation of some sort). That's how I would do it.... Doc

Re: Unleash The Clockworks Of War! In Clockwork and Chivalry there is a fantastic description of the Battle of Naseby where clockwork was used for the first time in a dramatic fashion. There were the Ironside cavalry and three Leviathons (Faith, Hope and Charity). The reason the Parliamentarians did not entirely succeed before the alchemists got their magic in place was that the contraptions ran out of power and were effectively stranded. Parliament has been co-opting wind and water mills to power winding stations where machines can be wound quickly and easily and, after Naseby, have devised mobile winding stations that are powered by prisoners and volunteers... Doc

Re: A Handy Chart if you email it to me I'll pdf it and upload for you... Doc

Re: Unleash The Clockworks Of War! I think there would be a mixed reception just like there was in the real world. You would have certain groups very happy e.g. guildworkers of metalworking guilds and mines would see this as a huge advantage and new money making opportunity while others will not welcome the new competition. There will also be those that see the ability of the new technology to improve the quality of their troops without the expense of training them. Obviously the nobility do not like equalisers of any kind and so they might be hostile to this. Finally - there are the religious side. There may be those that take up a religious stance - the universe is clockwork and people should worship the Great Engineer which steps on the toes of current organised religions... Doc

Re: Unleash The Clockworks Of War! Maybe you should go look at the Clockwork and Chivalry (website here) stuff - an alternate English Civil War where the Royalists took up alchemy to gain a march while the Parliamentarians turned to clockwork mechanisation. Is a decent background to game in and the clockwork ideas should be eminently stealable... Doc

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular? It explicitly does not in 6th. It is less explicit in 5th but in 4th edition there is a sentence that says "A character may not hold his action and then recover" and even though this comes in a paragraph after one that says "Segment 12 recovery is free and places no requirements on the character", my group has been playing this to mean that you can hold across turns but it prevents you from recovering...

Re: Why is Speed so unpopular?