Fantasy Hero

Hello again. Still working out all the differences between the current FH and the original. No figured characteristics?? Who'd have thunk it?! Any suggestions for balancing combat? IE: if you have 3 PC's totaling 450 CP the easiest is to have 3 equally powerful adversaries. But what if they're fighting a single Big Bad? Is it still viable in the new version to ignore CP for the villain and just give him enough defense to shrug off 90% of their average damage and enough damage dealing that 15% of an average attack gets through the hero's defenses, etc..? Back in the Primordial days of HS that worked pretty well.

Monsters! Well, ain’t this fun! Critters for your games of Fantasy HERO, Victorian HERO, or a really weird game of Monopoly. I run them in Caleon, a steampunk setting, and Ravenna, an urban fantasy game set in Italy for unresolved (likely inadequate) reasons. The text descriptions have been obtained by use of ChatGPT, and the HERO System character sheets derived from that text. The process involves dropping Olekzandr Zahorulko's art onto the chat window and seeing what it spits back at me. Cheating? Maybe. Fun. Certainly. The art is all licensed and legal. HDCs and a WIP are available on my OneDrive. I might do the same for his …

I have a small group of players who have voiced a willingness to try it out. I played older Champions and the original Fantasy Hero back in the late 80's or early 90's, the players have never used Hero System. So which would you recommend for us? FH or FHC?

One of the things I remember from my early days in RPGs (D&D) was how cool the idea of an intelligent magic sword was. Please share your intelligent sword concepts.

This is a Topic going over what are some of the Nasty things that a Big Bad Monster might do to the Player Characters. Like swallowing you whole or smashing you into the ground or anything else you would like to see that huge behemoth of a Worm, or Lizard, or Insect, or whatever might do.

I have no idea if I ever posted these before, but anyways, enjoy!

Has anyone seen that with the Weapon lists in Fantasy Hero 5th Edition the costs seem to be off. For Example it has the Active Point and Real Point listed as 45/15 when it should be 30/10. The reason I am seeing it as only 30 points Active Cost as it is only a 2d6 HKA with no advantages (it is not Armor Piercing, has no STUN Bonus, no OCV Bonus, and Cannot Be Used at Range). The following is the writeup: Axe, Battle: Killing Attack - Hand-To-Hand 2d6 (DEF 4; BODY 6) (30 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 13 (-1/2), Required Hands One-And-A-Half-Handed (-1/4), Real Weapon (-1/4); (Real Cost 15) Could this be an incorrect cost or am I…

Hi, everyone! I just posted Hero Designer files and PDF writeups for King Arthur Pendragon, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot of the Lake in the downloads section from British legends. If there's sufficient interest, I may come up with writeups for some of the Knights of the Round Table and assorted villain knights they faced such as Mordred, Turquine, etc. https://www.herogames.com/files/file/526-king-arthur-queen-guinevere-and-sir-lancelot/

I was thinking about the game world I am developing and the idea of Languages. Now I was thinking about a common trade tongue, but since the main part of the setting is a large Basin Lake/Sea and the similarity to the Mediterranean, I was thinking of doing something similar. One city state took control of the Basin for 300 years, and so I am thinking about doing the following: Old Tenryk lead to the following dialects Aerelios/ Danris- due to the fact that both are on that LARGE river leading out of the Gefting Sea Kerqod- Kerqod is isolated in that it has mountains or hills on three side and the Sea on the bottom. I could see it develo…

using the hero designer program just wondering if this character looks like it would be playable. The campaign style seems to be following elements from the series Goblin Slayer mostly the guild ranking system. thus every PC is suppose to have the disadvantages of Hunted-Adventurers Guild (More Powerful, NCI, and Mild Punishments) Basically like a Strict Boss watching what you do and if you'll cause problems for the guild and the social limitation- Member of the Adventurer's Guild, which is used to show how well your treated by the guild based on the Perk Guild Rank (Example, 0pts- Porcelian Rank, 1pt- Obsidian Rank, 2pt- Iron Rank, etc) Alexander Eldoria.H…

In most fantasy stories and games, people use either a monarchy or theocracy. This night be because either is easier to use and operate within the system. However, people have always refused to be easily shoehorned into simple systems. Even when those systems were everywhere, other systems could be found. The first recorded democratic government was pre-Christian, others existed during the middle ages, and other forms were found at the same time. Not considering those ever present religion-centered or monarchy ones, what other systems have people created during the middle ages and how were they maintained?

How would you do a spell that changes the area so that it is underwater? Basically makes a globe of water that everyone within it are considered to be underwater. I am thinking that Change Environment would be the power to do it but not sure how to create it. This is for a game that is using 5th edition, but considering Change Environment are about the same in both version getting ideas how to do it in 6th edition would also be very helpful.

I’ve just noticed something about spears. In FHC (and probably most Fantasy Hero stuff) a Short Spear is listed as a 2 handed weapon which is fine. However I play other games where the spear can used one handed albeit with lower damage. Again that’s fine. The issue I have is a spear having a STR Min of 12 (at least in FHC) that seems awfully high. So should I change the spear to a 11/2 handed weapon and or lower the STR Min. ?

A Swords and Sorcery game requires Sorcerors. Nasty ones, not PCs or friendly NPCs. At least a dozen of them, preferably more. I need some ideas. Not builds, but fluff text, and perhaps some suggestions for Disadvantages and/or Complications. Any suggestions you have for the magic bad guys Bob the Barbarian would run into would be awesome. (They don't have to be human, or even alive - just people who Bob would have to try to stick a sword into.)

Lately I've been reading/re-reading some of Lin Carter's Thongor books. (They're fun but not very good.) Anyway, they include Sumia, Thongor's romantic interest, who is a stereotypical Dejah Thoris type Princess. She wanders around like a Fantasy Hero DNPC, without doing much that is useful. This makes her an exception to a group of people (Thongor and his friends) that tends to include various warriors, and even a wizard. She is the only female member of the group. 🙄 I started thinking: how could you make such a character a PC? She has a legitimate background - Exiled Princess (technically Usurped Empress). She's not a Warrior or a Wizard, but something else. …

I'm looking for help with developing a power and choosing the right limitation. The power is called "Mindblade" and allows users to create a weapon (melee or ranged) using its psionic power. The weapon has the same characteristic as a standard weapon of the same type, a mace mindblade has the same properties as a mace and a mindblade lance has the same properties as a lance. The mindblade could be disarmed or damaged as a normal weapon has weight. My idea was to use the standard weapon template and change some of the limitations to reflect the new nature of the weapon. Require strength and required hands to stay the way they are. …

I've never been terribly fond of the Speed Chart and the mechanical effect it has on combat. Its only advantage, to my mind, is that it guarantees that a combatant with SPD 4 acts exactly twice as often as one with SPD 2. The big problem with it is that it encourages the sort of metagaming mindset which allows players to pre-plan their combats, to the grave detriment of the feeling of fast-moving chaotic excitement which combat should have. I've tried a couple of ways to get around this, to make combat less rigidly structured without doing away with the SPD system altogether. The first variation: Random Segment Determination , in which a d12 is rolled and those …

back in 1996 I modified the then current setting for Fantasy Hero (2e, 1990), Western Shores. Adding to it again in 2006. I'm now thinking of updating and improving it to 6e Hero System as I may run another campaign using it. This thread is for feedback and ideas on what I've done so far and what folk might like to see (and if anyone actually would like it to be done). Locations to find this setting: The Western Shores Campaign (1996, 4e Hero System, note the elite level HTML use) The Western Shores (2006, 5e Hero System, some issues with transitioning wiki markup from the RPG.net site) WS:Index (same as above but hosted on the RPG.net wiki) …

This weekend, I was contemplating PD vs ED. My game has always been Fantasy Hero, rarely so much as looking sideways at other genres, and the PD/ED divide always struck me as artificial. Something left over from superheroes, but needless clutter in a fantasy game, where PD and ED are listed separately but typically closely balanced if not identical. My ideas about supers are probably naive, neither reading comics much nor having ever played a supers game, but it seems to me that energy projectors are all about energy (duh!) while bricks and martial artists are all about physical stuff. In other words, PD and ED exist to express and differentiate character archetypes. Ener…

I've been bingeing a lot of Swords and Sorcery recently, and keep running into a lot of other worldy/dream/weird sequences. Even Conan isn't immune (see The Frost Giant's Daughter, The Vale of Lost Women, and others I can't be bothered thinking of). The obvious question is: how would you run this in a game? It's quite a different tone from more "realistic" situations, yet it is so commonly present that it begs to be included. I can see a lot of players and GMs not wanting to do it, but for those who do: how would you handle it?

What would be the best way to make an area magically filled with water so that a radius of water appears and stays there so anyone going into it will have to swim and have the same problems as being under water?

Was wondering if people think it might be a good idea to have Fantasy Hero characters pay points for their equipment. It can be said that it is rather hard to determine the strength of FH characters if their equipment is free. Or is there any other way to better determine the strength of your characters?

This is a write-up for Merlin the Magician adapted from various Arthurian legends, films, and RPG write-ups for D&D. Included is the Hero Designer file and character sheet (5th Edition) in Microsoft Word. Some design notes for your reference: 1) Most of what I read and watched depicted Merlin as a diviner and seer who works through others rather than actively commit direct action. The most common abilities portrayed were his divination to see into the future, ability to move through nature much faster than normal means (those traveling with him also moved faster as a result), and glamour magic (illusions). I increased the END cost for his g…

Comments are welcome Nemesis Anastasia Romanova Background Anastasia was the not so bright apprentice to a great and evil mage(Koschei the deathless) The mage needed a soul he could control to power his iron golem to protect his estate from fairies and other threats During this time the mage added many spells to aid his creation to look normal ,as the times warranted it he needed to disguise her later she became his lover and assassin posing as his apprentice with a wandering eye later the mage died in a lab accident(not her fault) and Anastasia was left without being controlled She is looking to right the wrongs she did while controll…

I recently read Osprey Games' Romance in the Perilous Land that had interesting interpretations of characters from Arthurian romance. Inspired by the work, I developed four re-imagined characters from Arthurian legends. They are the following: 1) Queen Guinevere is a knight. In this incarnation, war has come to Camelot. Initially healing the injured, Guinevere takes a more active role and takes up arms as the casualties rise and the war is not going in Camelot's favor. She still has her secret affair with Sir Lancelot, so I added the disguise and concealment skills that she would likely use. 2) Elaine of Astolat is a knight. This versio…