Doc Democracy

Do you agree that high DEX for a dog, a shark and monkey should all have the same effect as high DEX for a man? You think all the derived stats work the same for all those creatures? And for vampires, for robots and Kzinti? I think it would be impossible for all that to be true for all those instances. 6th is more, let me think of the right word here, ah yes, universal, than previous editions. I do not think high agility equates to high combat values or vice versa. I do not think the system should tempt folk into having a higher DEX or CON simply because it makes economic sense (in a character point economy) to have them. Doc

Heart and mind fighting there Sean? 🙂 I think it is also the difference between the system and game. Each game should have its own guidelines, probably influenced by guidance in the system book. I do think that the price of HERO is more upfront detailed prep by the GM (unless the GM is doing all the character building). I agree that the next steps in this particular line of evolution would be teasing apart what a characteristic (like STR, DEX and CON) is compared to a game statistic (like PD, REC and OCV) which might drive some mechanical changes in how they work and are bought. All of which might clarify issues. Evolution is a slow painful process....

You leave me slightly bemused on where you stand. You agree that fighting ability and physical prowess are not necessarily linked and yet call the system flawed because it reflects that... Doc

The other thing about needing a high DEX to be combat effective means that, for example, Thing only needs three points to have 14 or 15 or less in Acrobatics. I just think that there is so many things tied together pre-6th that I am pleased to see the teased apart in the current rules. I like high DEX to mean that the character is dexterous, not that they are good at hitting things. Doc

Yup, but you suggested providing for the purchase of OCV and DCV directly (as a sub-set of skills). what you appear most concerned with is having an understanding of one vision of how primaries should relate to figureds. I was a huge fan of figureds until I stopped using them in 6th edition. My friend recently ran a Back to Forth game inspired by the Bundle of Holding. I found them amazingly restraining and unintuitive compared to my memory of them. Very few players would, I agree, even if the CV was not in the original design. That is already making Hugh’s case. The idea was not to have an Uber-competent combatant but you don’t nerf your character.... Even your suggestion that the high Dex character should buy skill levels loses some of the cohesiveness you seek by saying a highly dexterous character should not buy high DEX. Doc

OK, I think he majority of your query is handled by non-combat multiples. If you have 12m running with SPD 3 you can run 36m every 12s if you want to retain full combat ability. You can double that, 72m every 12s, by sprinting which means you lose combat abilities. you can purchase doublers to that sprinting which does not affect your normal movement in combat, so you can effectively run at 100 miles an hour but only move 12m in an action where you retain your combat values. I would be inclined to keep this and hand wave the ability to do car-chases once at top speed. I would not allow them to strafe non-moving targets unless that causes them to drastically slow down and use 0 OCV to do so. experience could be used to slowly switch between NCM and better running speeds. Doc

Surely you have simply increased the price of DEX and added the stats that you said increased complexity? Now you have DEX, figured CV AND stats for OCV and DCV??

Hmmm. When you say that do you mean Luke? Anakin? Leia? or Kylo Ren?? They could all be classed as Skywalkers and, in the movies at least, two of those are readily classed as alive, two as dead...

Had to highlight the use of this colloquialism when talking about people of colour walking into a racist establishment.... ...did you do it knowingly Neil??? ? Doc

I have always had a great time with the Coriolis Effect. Doc

My way of doing things is have each player work out "Why you want to work with..." for at least two other players' characters and disallow a closed loop of three players...

An idea I never got around to using was for the Empire Club to be a huge zeppelin. It was mostly stationary but would take an annual tour of the Dark Continent. The things is that casual members got to see the cupola and regular benefits, they never found out that this was no ordinary zeppelin. The ship did not use hydrogen or helium, the skin of the zeppelin was made of a gravity repelling alloy and the REAL Empire Club was inside what would normally be the airbag.

When I was growing up there was not a single superhero movie that I would not have travelled miles to see, including the Return of Captain Invincible.... I find myself now feeling like I have to see a movie just so that I get the most out of the next one. It is too much work for me and I find myself opting out. I am now choosing not to see films that are far superior to those that I fought to watch simply because it feels like I need to do my homework (I was always rubbish at that). Doc

I apologise in advance for the rant break... God I hate continuity being a holy grail in the comics, it ultimately meant that I stopped buying monthly comics and it is putting me off going to see movies now too. Dont get me wrong there is something cool in things that happen in one film being referenced in a later one but the fact that great stories might never be told, great films might never be screened because they dont fit with the continuity really grinds my gears... You can go back to your regular programming....

There are three forums here that I can mark as read (Dark Champions, Pulp Hero and Star Hero). If I hover over the black circle it shows "Mark forum as read" and if I click it, the forum no longer has any mails marked as unread, no confirmation required. If I go to the forum and click the button there, I am required to confirm the request. So, the answer is to read the mails you want, go to the home page and then click down the forums, marking them as read.... Doc PS: after playing with the pages, the confirmatory text you have posted comes from the home page when you want to mark the whole site as read...not individual forums.

This was obviously bothering the back of my brain, I had to find the thread and come back to it, despite having read it days ago without comment. The first thing, on re-reading, is that the terminology used is probably not as strict as I remember it being, thus it is not as "wrong" as I thought. However, I have started so I will finish. Everything Christopher has said is true, though I do think there are caveats. In some instances in the quoted text there is some flexibility in the use of phase and segment. Segments are fixed points, phases are more fuzzy. My players finally got the idea that you do not HAVE to act on the first segment in your phase, that there may even be advantages in delaying. So, "speed 7...the first speed where you get back-to-back phases of action". In strict terms all speeds get back-to-back phases of action. Speed 7 is the first speed where two phases of action happen in back-to-back segments of the speed chart. Speed 6 allows you to act on segments 3 and 4, or segments 5 and 6. That needs the player to delay is action in one of his phases to accomplish that. SPD 7 allows the player to act on segments 6 and 7 with no such delays. In fact. SPD 7 would allow a player to act in three consecutive segments (5, 6 and 7) which no lesser SPD could manage. So yes, I think SPD 7 is a threshold that really ups the game of a character, I just had to make sure I went through it with the right terminology!! Doc

I like to be able to give characters with relevant knowledge skills an idea of competence before the fight begins. For example "The big guy with the hammer looks as though he is only muscle but sheer power is worth being careful around, the guy to his right is the one to be careful of, he looks well-trained and might use the big guy as a distraction, probably right around the same level of ability as you and able to adapt to situations. The other three are trained fighters but none of them as competent as you, they all know where the pointy end of the sword is and where to poke it." If they have time to successfully make any kind of analysis roll, I am inclined to give game stats. Doc

The second page of that character sheet is essentially a reference of different charts that I think the player might find useful - each player will have some of the same and some different. I do like to customise the sheets to the user needs... Doc

I do prefer play sheets to have more words and fewer numbers. I want to provoke the players to engage narratively with their characters.

I do not honestly think I have done any of those things with this sheet. The Target 10 method involves no fewer calculations. I have hidden nothing necessary to playing the game, nor removed any of the rules. The fact that you might consider that I have shows I succeeded in my goal, to make the game more accessible to a wider range of people. I am VERY not convinced that just coz we learned the hard way, we should expect everyone else to. Doc

Here is Roddy Reyburn with nothing but (damage dice), (dice modifiers) and [END costs]. Doc PS: I do not have an electronic build sheet yet, just lots of scribbled notes... GA-RoddyReyburn[10].pdf

I am just creating character sheets for my upcoming Golden Age game. I am thinking that I am going to present the players with a sheet that simply has D&D style modifiers next to everything and the idea will be to have success acquaint to achieving a (modified) roll of 10 or greater on 3D6. so to attack, the player will decide his manoeuvre, allocate skills and add all the modifiers to his dice roll. So rolling 11+8 (OCV)-3 (Range) is 16. That will be a success for any DCV of 6 or less. To know some fact about Berlin, Tam O’Shanter asks if his KS: EUROPEAN CAPITALS (+3) would allow him to know. I reckon the fact is relatively obscure for such a broad knowledge skill and apply a difficulty modifier of -4. That would mean Tam rolls 3D6, adds 3 for his knowledge skill, subtracts 4 due to the obscurity. If the result is 10 or greater, he knows. I think the notation of (+3) on a sheet is cleaner than 14- or 14 or less. I also like having that target number concept that is consistent across every task the players choose to attempt. I will see if I can do two versions, for you to compare. Doc

To me, a build sheet is a sheet with all the numbers on it, all the detail. It is, by necessity, more mechanical and less evocative than a sheet to be used in play.

Brian I would seriously suggest using a build sheet to teach how to build a character but to get as much of the building dross out of the way on a play sheet. Doc

Hmm. There is the whole argument of whether critical hits are a good or bad thing as the probabilities weigh against the player characters who are in every fight. However, that is not what this is about, it is about providing good rolls with additional damage, something I have generally been in favour of. If you take the example above you get a reasonably good idea of what you might cost it at. I think that if you took +4D6 with an 8- activation roll, linked to an attack, with the stipulation that the damage from the bonus 4 dice added to that of the main attack could not exceed the maximum damage of the main attack, then you would have a construct I would be inclined to allow in a game of mine. I would start with the limitation for 8- and an additional -1/2 for being linked to the main attack. I “might” be persuaded as to an additional -1/4 for the damage limitation but that would depend a LOT on the relative strengths of the main attack and the bonus. If I never thought I would hit the cap then it would be a -0 limitation. I would not require an additional roll for the bonus, just deliver additional dice on whether the roll to attack was 8- or half the required roll (whatever was lower). Doc