Forgotten Reallms in HERO

[Ragitsu]

Has anyone here ever ran a Forgotten Realms campaign with any version of the HERO system? How did it turn out?

[tkdguy]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

There used to be a member who converted FR to the HERO system.

 

Here's his website.

[Bismark]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

Just finished a campaign a few weeks ago, using HERO 5ER with the old 1987 'grey boxed set' version of the Realms (with a few choice additions from later versions).

 

I used the bog-standard Turakian Age magic system (with the divisor) - because it was easy, and with 6e being just around the corner (when the campaign started) I did not want to put too much effort into the magic system when I was planning to revamp the whole thing for 6e anyway.

 

Characters were built on about 200-215 points,usually including at least one 'signature' magic item.

 

Things went quite well - I started the party off in the Dales (what a surprise ) and what started off as raiding Zhentarim supply caravans heading inrto Daggerdale turned into an all-out assault on the logging camp at Snowmantle in Teshendale, using a motley array of allies including various fey, an elder dragon and a buch of Kobolds (yes, Kobolds!).

 

As I was using 5ER and I have a bit of OCD when it comes to min-maxing with pre-6e HERO (I really cannot help myself - all that lovely Characteristic point recursion -yum!), there was an awful lot of STR 20, DEX 14, 18 or 20 going on here.

 

Also, using the magic system that I was using, I realised that casters would generally be superior to 'pure' fighters, therefore the entire party was made up of 'semi-spell users' (to use the Rolemaster term) apart from one mage who was gifted/tainted with Spellfire (and hence had access to the Arcane magic lists - using the old HERO Grimoires here).

 

We had:

 

1. Human mage with Wizardy and Arcane specialisations - used a staff focus and a sword in the other hand (and yes, he had robes and a pointy hat - both magical and giving protection equivalent to a mail coat)

2. Fire Genasi fighter/mage with fire spells - no surprise there

3. Earth Genasi fighter/mage with earth spells and a signature weapon - a magic mace which did silly damage (3D6K, +2 STUN Mod, Affects magical /undead desolid)

4. Elf Druid with a magic bow and a huge chopper (a Dacian falx [battle scythe], to be precise)

5. An Aasimar priest of Lathander the Dawn God

6. A nomadic Gnome shaman/"Giant-hunter" (yes, you read that right - "Giant-hunter") from the Ride, with his pet riding badger and a magic Bohemian Ear-spoon (yes, THAT Bohemian Ear-spoon I posted to theese here boards a while back). This guy attracted all the usual Gnome-based japery - I called him 'The Gnomad'

 

Just your ordinary bunch of adventurers then

 

If you want, I can post the .hdc files or the PDFs of the characters so you can laugh at them/adjust them to suit you/whatever.

 

Things I learned:

 

1. be very careful with spell descriptions - I wish I had spotted that the priest's Power Defence spell (for undead protection) affected up to 8 people simultaneously. This is the standard spell from the Grimoire, and I suggest that the number of people be lowered, otherwise most energy-draining undead become a bit of a joke.

 

2. Weapon STUN damage was an issue - in particular, maces/hammers were just way too good compared to swords/spears. I will be adjusting that for future campaigns with some custom Limitations which I will thrash out with the other people on these forums.

 

 

 

I intend to run the Realms again, but this time I will use HERO 6e as the ruleset. The magic will use a Powers/Key descriptor system for spells similar to 4e D&D (but without the moving things around a battle grid and the 'gamist' stuff like 'per encounter' powers [they will be simulated with powers that have a 1 hour lockout after use, or similar Limitation]). Fighter-types will also get super-skills, to remove the old 'casters are way better' syndrome.

 

Damge keyword descriptors will also be nabbed from 4e D&D - hence, most undead will do Necrotic damage, etc.

 

I have attached my version 1.0 document which I wrote to remind myself what keywords translate to in terms of HERO system damge types and defences affected - which will eventually become the document to inform new players how these things will work.

 

This is a work in progress, on which I am happy to collaborate.

 

As an afterword, most of my players will not be around next campaign (I run at the local university, and all but one of the players will have left by then) but the player who is going to still be at the university wants to join my new campaign - so it must have gone OK (he was the Gnome, btw, who was SO much fun).

[BlueCloud2k2]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

Had an FR one-shot planned to convert some friends from DnD to HERO... but it fell apart because 2 of my players had played GURPS and FUZION and hated both, who then went and told my other 3 players how crappy both systems were and HERO would be just as much a waste of time.

 

I even had a write-up of Drizzt Do'urden that one of my players was going to run (like many, he was OBSESSED with the Drow Ranger). *sigh*

 

Anyway, I'm living in a new town with my fiance and have some friends who are willing to give HERO a shot because they agree that DnD 3.5 is unbalanced and they don't like 4e Dnd one bit as they already play WoW. Maybe I'll give it another go *shrug*

[Ragitsu]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

Why do you need to "convert" a player? Can't they use/run/play/enjoy more than one system?

 

Anyhow, good luck. It is hard to find players that even know what HERO is.

[BlueCloud2k2]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

Why do you need to "convert" a player? Can't they use/run/play/enjoy more than one system?

 

Anyhow, good luck. It is hard to find players that even know what HERO is.

 

This really isn't on-topic but you asked...

 

Not so much as "convert" as get them to try. What it came down to was that they were too lazy to try something new (even though they complained when they got screwed by the core-mechanics of D20 3.5). I tried to get them to do a one-shot, and they refused. I wroteup several characters from the DnD books (Drizzt, Jarlaxle, Artemis, Catti-bree, Wulfgar, etc) that were conversions from the Forgotten Realms campaign guide or were based on what I had read from the Salvatore novels. Even with me doing all of the work they didn't want to try something new. Very frustrating.

 

Never did find the box that had my D20-to-HERO conversion stuff in it... was going to hand my writeups over to Susano for his website...

[tkdguy]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

I understand that frustration. I couldn't get my AD&D group to play another game system, or even another AD&D setting.

[Ragitsu]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

Wow, Bismark, thank you very much for that informative post! Myself, i'm using the 3.0 Forgotten Realms books.

[AlHazred]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

2. Weapon STUN damage was an issue - in particular' date=' maces/hammers were just way too good compared to swords/spears. I will be adjusting that for future campaigns with some custom Limitations which I will thrash out with the other people on these forums.[/quote']Under 6E, the STUN lottery has become less "profitable" -- the 1/2d6 STUN Multiplier serves to reign in inappropriately-large amounts of STUN damage on killing attacks. Except that they still have the Hit Location chart with multipliers going from 1 to 5...

 

I think if you tweak the multiples on the chart (say, x4 for Head/Vitals, x3 for Shoulders/Chest/Thighs, x2 for Arms/Legs, an x1 for everything else) it might be more to your flavor. I'm considering this for my High Fantasy campaign.

[Bismark]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

Al Hazred:

 

Regarding weapon damage, I was considering some Limited Power stuff for 'real weapons' - one example:

 

'Weapon does Minumum STUN' - x1 STUN maximum, regardless of location hit (useful for arrows and the like - it's the bleeding that gets you with these things)

 

There are a few others I am working on which I will submit as a 'working document' when I have throught up a few more; one thing that strikes me is I am veering towards treating mace/hammers (and slingshot for that matter) as AP Normal attacks.

[AlHazred]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

I will add that I did a bunch of FR conversions for books of magic spells. At one point (several years ago, under 3.5 D&D) they had a column on the wizards website that had a Pages from the Mages feel. I converted several of the the spells in those books to Fantasy Hero 5E versions. Should be easy enough to update to 6E.

 

For someone else, that is. I'm in the middle of three different Hero projects of my own!

[Ragitsu]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

What are some ways to represent "Epic Level" characters (as per 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder) in HERO 6th Edition?

[Prestige]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO

 

What are some ways to represent "Epic Level" characters (as per 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder) in HERO 6th Edition?

 

I know alot more about D&D 3.5 and the FR then I do about Hero system for anything other than superheroes...so take this with a grain of salt.

But you could give them VPP for caster types. (And well 99% of those types are casters)

For non-casters Epic level casters...if you limit CSL you could allow them to exceed those limits.