Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

[Adinecia]

Dear Forum and All of Its Inhabitants,

 

 

I am here for i am suffering from a problem.

I am hoping to start game mastering a Fantasy Setting / Campaign soon in which Faery's (Fae-kin like beings in this case) are one of the worlds many races.

 

Here is my problem: I want the faery kin (if a player should decide to play one) to be / feel usefull in combat. Thus i am allowing them to have stats which are near equal to most of the other normal sized (human sized) races. But because of this it seems that the Racial Bonuses one gets for being a fairy (DCV - Shrinking and such) are proving to be quite unbalancing. Since they have equal STR and PD / ED. They are hard to hit and if one should be lucky enough to hit one they hardly take dmg for their as tough as the rest.

 

So i came up with an idea: Make it so that when faeries are hit by anything normal sized (human size) they get increased dmg. And when attacking something anything normal sized they do decreased dmg. Thus allowing them to keep the stats instead of having them be lowered and have a player be unhappy for his fae-kin character got KO'd with 1 hit from your average gang member (considering they do get hit of course).

 

 

Now i started searching but i cant seem to find any rule / guideline regarding this in the 6th edition books.

 

Is this even worth thinking about? or am i just a complete nut-case for thinking this is a possible solution?

 

I welcome any advice or tip regarding this issue...

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

 

Welcome to our community, Adinecia! Always good to hear from a (new?) HERO GM.

 

This sounds like a reasonable approach to balancing characters in your game. If you want all Faeries to deal out or suffer more or less damage in particular circumstances, the easiest way IMHO is to define appropriate Complications for them. A Physical Complication for doing less damage to larger opponents, and a Vulnerability to being hit by bigger beings, would be appropriate.

 

My forum colleagues will undoubtedly be along with other suggestions, though. There's rarely one "right" way to do anything in HERO System. And we HEROphiles love to give system advice, as my signature below notes.

[Adinecia]

Re: Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

 

Thanks for the warm welcome Lord Laiden.

 

Complications, that is indeed an interesting way to work it out.

Thanks for the tip i'll read up on possibilities.

 

I cant wait to see what your colleagues have to say.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

 

You really just need to decide what you want faery kin to be like and make a racial template for it. Sure a small character will have a high DCV, but they will have to pay for it and so will have fewer points for other things, so it should balance out. How do you envision faery kin in combat? Do they use magic mostly or regular (though small) weapons? Can their small weapons inflict normal damage, and if so why? Do they use magic/poison to make their tiny weapons do more damage or make the target fall asleep? Is the STR of faery kin limited, or could one of them pick up a normal human and fly around with them? Do they take more damage from physical attacks do to their size, or does their magic nature make them as tough as a much larger human?

 

There are no wrong answers as long as they fit your conception, but you just need to define what the faery kin can and cannot do, and then build their racial template accordingly.

[Escafarc]

Re: Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

 

If you can, check out the 6E HERO Bestiary (page 306-334) there's a whole section on Fae creatures.

[Old Man]

Re: Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

 

Ordinarily you might expect very small characters to have correspondingly low values for STR, BODY, and CON. Cinematically, combat with characters like this tends to be all-or-nothing--the fairy flits around and is extremely difficult to hit, but when she does get hit she's definitely stunned outright and often cold-cocked. I'd let such characters have relatively high Body values and Combat Luck (just so they can survive) but their STR and CON should be pretty low, forcing them to get creative with called shots, lots of dodging, and other mischief in order to be combat relevant.

 

To make up for this I'd expect fairy characters to have high DEX and CVs. In general their DCV ought to be around 4-5 points higher than the average OCV in the campaign; this will drop their odds of being hit to something like 7%. OCV is not as important, and you have to be careful with high PC OCVs, but again such characters will need to use precision to make up for lack of raw damage.

[Adinecia]

Re: Faery Kin (Balance) & Rules

 

After reading all of your points, thoughts and tips on this issue i've come to the conclusion that i need to think harder on what fits best in the setting.

 

And most likely give all of these options a "test-run" and see what the results are.

 

I'll post the results here with a short description of how this setting is set-up.

And hopefully you all wont mind giving me your 2-cents on that matter as wel.

 

 

Cheers,