Doc Democracy

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs Steamteck, in case you need to find it, Kdansky's thread on the math of KA versus EB is here. Doc

Re: Switching Places I probably wasn't clear. Mr Teleport gets around a lot. He uses TP to do that. If he uses TP in a dive for cover manouevre then he can trigger an otherwise unusable TP that moves the beneficiary of the dive for cover to where he had been standing. Now, what I was asking was, if you have already bought the movement TP would you allow the triggered TP to be bought UAA?? It simply saves points as I am not then purchasing a movement TP that can only be used in the switching places manouevre... Doc

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs

Re: Decoupling Movement from Speed or Segement moviement haven't got any play tested rules but have thought about it in the past. My thoughts were to assume, for the purposes of the game that the base SPD of movement was 4. Movement would then be bought per turn (just like anything else) and would cost 1pts per 4 inches. Your movement would then take place per segment in (movement inches)/12. I stalled when I had to sit down and think about acceleration and deceleration and where that movement sat with action phases. Downside - increased SPD has no impact on movement velocity. So I thought that a +1/4 advantage that changed the 4 inches for (SPD) inches would be acceptable. beyond that, nothing. Doc

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs That works both ways - just because my Psycho Killer did throw a 6 on the multiplier this attack does not mean he will not do so this time. 1 in 6 is still a statistic. As for results - with the 14 BODY average I am happy in a game where DEF 30 is high defences with multipliers of 3,4 or 5. Half the time I am doing at least as much stun as the normal attack does (42, 56 and 70 STUN). Indeed, I will be doing getting a stun result far more regularly than my normal attack weilding friends. Again - more statistics but there is no way to discuss this sensibly without some level of chance analysis. Doc Doc

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs Far be it for me to repeat the maths of lots of people in previous threads. The problem with killing attacks are the extreme high results, they come up too often. in a 60 point game you get 12D6 or 4D6K. Maximum STUN/BODY of the normal attack is 72 STUN 24 BODY which comes up a vanishingly small number of times, the but, on average, the killing attack will achieve in the region of 70 STUN every six hits (when the average BODY gets the maximum multiplier). If average defences are 30 PD - giving the 12D6 12 STUN on average hit, then the killing attack will do 40 STUN every sixth hit or so - resulting almost inevitably in a stunned opponent - ripe for a finishing off attack. The normal attack will almost never do the damage to achieve a stun effect if average CON is around 28. If I am metagaming then give me killing attacks every time - me and my buddy will win.... Doc

Re: Switching Places Hmm. Expensive. Would you, as a GM, consider simply a triggered TP that would go off when using a normal Usable as an attack TP in an abort manoeuver? So more like Teleportation 10", Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates; +1)(40 Active Points). The trigger would be using your TP in a Interposing manoeuvre? Doc

Re: Machine Class of Minds I can categorically tell you that there is no computer attached to Big Ben...the bell and associated clockwork are entirely non-digital. Doc

Re: Machine Class of Minds

Re: Switching Places Hmm. The actual mechanical effect is a switchround. The other mechanical effect is that you get hit instead of someone else. Why do you want to do something as difficult rather than simply teleporting the person out of the way - 1" to the left or right would be a much better result for both of you! The second idea could be done a number of ways but the main idea would be to avoid the attack and so could be missile deflection or direct teleportation or a number of things. You are looking for something much different. As a GM I might be reaching toward an EDM Dive for cover here....Sean? Doc

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs I like this one. I think that a killing attack should get its STUN as multiples of BODY done to the target. I'd even be willing to see the multiplier increased for this but if it bounces then it would do no damage. I would allow defences to be bought such that they allowed the STUN to be done through them but I'll bet few people would do that. I think that I'd make the rule something like as follows: 0 BODY - 0 STUN 1-3 BODY - 1-3 * 1D6 4-6 BODY - 4-6 * 2D6 Etc etc Now this makes the Killing attack increasingly effective if the damage is getting through but much less effective if it is not. Some people might not like the exponential increase in STUN/BODY ration but I like the fact that a hit that does lots of BODY is almost certain to do lots of STUN. I might even implement this in the next game I run. Doc

Re: What source material informs your fantasy gaming? Hmm. I love background characters that perform small but important tasks in the world shaking events around them. As such I'd have to say that my games most resemble Drawing of the Dark (Tim Powers) Ash (Mary Gentle) I enjoy reading some High Fantasy but so much prefer less grandiose stuff and have found myself drifting more often to SF which comes in a single book rather than a trilogy of them. Doc

Re: Argh Help need for a New Hero Gamer

Re: Alignments

Re: Alignments I'll bey I dont mean the same as Clonus. I'll bet it does actually mean something slightly different to many people and that anyone thinking of having an alignment system in their game needs to define exactly what they mean by that - it is a very Hero System approach. The start of this brings real world ethics into it. That is going to cause problems simply because ethics causes problems in the real world. Alignment as we speak of it is a game mechanic that allows a simulation of absolutes that we cannot prove to exist in the real world. They can prove they exist in fantasy realities and affiliation or alignment with such forces may result in very different effects from magic spells. I would agree with you that I dont think that I have read of alignment outside of RPGs and that D&D is the grand-daddy of alignment systems. However, the play of that system has varied wildly from group to group ever since the first edition... Doc

Re: Alignments In a real life social context that sounds fine. My problem comes in practical game mechanics. When do you decide if someone detects as good/evil/lawful/chaotic or can use artifacts keyed to those alignments? If it is all subjective to the person then anyone who thinks they are good is good (and detects as so) even if they regularly do evil things? Easy way to get the evil person in is to hypnotise them to believe they are good regardless of their actions or intents. As I said - more game practicalities than anything else. Doc

Re: Help needed, I new to hero system can someone offer me some advice? Here, from the online store. Doc

Re: Alignments To my mind it is not the name but the historical association. Growing up there were lots of people who would 'lock' you into your chosen alignment and forbid you from doing things because that was 'against your alignment'. I'm not sure that was the fault of the rules any more than any of the other horrors I experienced as a naive young gamer. To me they mean exactly the same and in my game that's what you would find. If you affiliate (or align) yourself with fundamental forces then you get benefits and drawbacks from that. If you do not align yourself then you get none of the bonuses and none of the drawbacks. In some places that makes you an object of suspicion and to others opportunity. You align yourself with 'Good' then you 'detect as Good' and can use those objects restricted for use by scions of Good. etc etc The problem, I think, on these boards with alignment draw from the same poor experiences that I knew when I was younger playing 'the other game'. Doc

Re: Help needed, I new to hero system can someone offer me some advice? Well. If you are competely new to the system there are a couple of things I would recommend. You have Champions - a must if you want the basic support in producing a superhero game via Hero. I would get at least one supplement with pre-made viallains in it. You will have your own ideas about the effectiveness etc of teh builds but they are vital in providing you with a look at how some characters have been built and how you might go about doing that yourself. Villainy Amok is a brilliant resource if you haven't run much superhero gaming as it leads you through the stock design principles of the superhero genre and how to put together the basic plots for your games. Finally, for hardcopy resource, I would suggest one of the UNTIL Superpower databse books as these have really good suggestions on how to get look and feel for individual powers that you can modify or rip off wholesale. My very last suggestion is that you pick up Hero Designer, the game software. It makes character creation a breeze and allows you to have a good soft copy of characters that you can then print out in a variety of forms. Hugely useful, especially if you decide you want to post a few characters on the boards for people to comment on. Doc

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect This is an ablating defence isn't it? It's a much better system than we have at present.... Hmm. I like it - worth presenting to steve on the 6th edition forums. Just now it is simply a matter of buying limited STUN (only when force field active, 1/4 at best I think) and limited REC (only for recovering FF STUN - I might give this 1/2 or 3/4). A messy character sheet but possible. I would have thought that recoveries would take place regardless of PC actions and so should be timed and take advantages or limitations for faster or slower recovery of STUN. You might even have BODY for defences such that when the BODY is gone you have to wait for the forcefield to recover it before you can use the power again. More book-keeping but possibly worth it for spaceship shields and weird and magical talents in Pulp or Fantasy games. Doc

Re: Alignments

Re: Ghosts You have stumbled upon one of the principles of Hero here. What you have to do is sit down and really think hard in normal language what it is you want to be able to do. You say you want to be able to speak to ghosts and get information from them. What kind of information do you think you will get from ghosts? When you work that out it becomes easier to consider. There are a number of ways to do things and they will often depend on the background work the GM has done in the setting. If the GM has a well developed spirit world with good ideas of what kind of ghosts exist and what they know, when you might meet them and what they would be able to tell you then it may be that all you need is a way to travel to the ghost plane and use normal communication skills. It may be the GM has no such information and is not likely to develop it just for you. Instead you might purchase Retro-cognition which lets you see what happened in the past at a certain place or to a certain object, the special effects being that you speak to ghosts hanging around that provide you with the information. So. What do you want to be able to do? Doc

Re: Shrinking spell abort Matter of interpretation as far as I see it. A strict interpretation would say that you see no shrinking effect until the extra phase is spent. No use for defensive abort in this case. A compromise might be that you can use it but you get 1/3 of the DCV effect that the full shrinking would provide due to the short space of time and limited shrinking. A player friendly response would be that you get the full benefits but that you have spent the rest of the extra phase getting to a stable shrunken state. Best to discuss with the GM and see what their interpretation is, that's the one that will count... Doc