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New to Hero: Character costs


Gandalf970

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4 minutes ago, Gandalf970 said:

I am making up some races and I need to know how much the following would cost.  This is a Fantasy World with a middle of the road magic.  Not High Fantasy, but there is magic and people use it.

 

Immune to Fear

Complication: Cannot comprehend Magic

Even though you said middle of the road Fantasy, the biggest question is how often in game do you expect this to come up? That affects the price. When I get a second I get some rough numbers. Btw someone might start saying about absolutes and Hero doesn’t have any, which by default it doesn’t however if  you want immune to fear you can have immune to fear.

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1 hour ago, Gandalf970 said:

Also how about a complication of not liking villages, towns or cities.  It will come up every session I would suspect, maybe a 5 pointer?

Let’s start here. Under Psy Comp you look at frequency. By your guess I rate it a Common 10 pts Next step is Intensity in other words how much of a bother is this to the character? Moderate is +0. Here I say the character will go into the city but will at a penalty for any interaction with City Folk. And the Player must have a good reason to go into the city (at least game wise at least protest-why must we have to go in there !) So a Strong level requires a successful EGO to go into the City. Change my mind! And Total is I’ll only go into the City Kicking and Screaming!

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2 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

I would say Fear will come up every third session.  Magic will probably occur or be seen at least every other session.

The magic complication does that mean the player can’t use anything magical that a regular person could? Like say use a magical scroll? If a mentalist controlled the character could the character then cast the magic? If no then you can use a Physical Complication to represent this. So I would rate this as Frequently 10 Pts and +5 Slightly. I went with Slightly cause I figure the character should be fairly competent with out magic but sometimes the magic would come in handy.

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For immunity to fear, I'd do a couple of things.  Extra Presence for defensive purposes only (against PRE Attacks).  Possibly a psych complication.  And then, Life Support vs. fear, for probably 3 points.  This is assuming there are natural things that a normal person might be afraid of, and even other PCs might need to make EGO rolls against, but this character wouldn't have to.

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In my Here There Be Monsters setting (which is a lower powered urban fantasy setting) I allow the following Talent:

 

 

Fear Resistance (The effect of all fear and intimidation based abilities (including PRE Attacks) is halved vs this character.); Real Cost: 10 points

 

The price is arbitrarily scaled to the point range of the campaign and its perceived general utility in that campaign. 

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Immune to Fear depends on how the campaign builds fear as an attack.

 

Mind Control is a common way to build a fear attack. (Mind Control, Only to cause fear.) So a character could buy: Mental Defence, Only vs. Fear based attacks. But this won't work against PRE attacks to cause fear, unless you house rule it. 

 

PRE attacks target EGO or PRE, whichever is higher. So you can buy EGO, Only vs. Fear. This will work against both Mind Control and PRE attacks.


This then begs the question what is Only vs. Fear worth as a limitation? I'd give it a blanket -1 but it is actually campaign dependent. Specifically, it's dependent on how often other types of mental attacks/telepathy occur.

 

If you want to avoid the mucking about with complicated power builds and just have a simple power that does a thing then you will have to guess at  it's cost. To get a sense for the correct cost compare it to other things that the players could buy for that many points. If you price Immune to Fear at 10 points, what else could the  player get for 10 points? Are these other things as useful as Immune to Fear?

 

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3 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

In my Here There Be Monsters setting (which is a lower powered urban fantasy setting) I allow the following Talent:

 

 

Fear Resistance (The effect of all fear and intimidation based abilities (including PRE Attacks) is halved vs this character.); Real Cost: 10 points

 

The price is arbitrarily scaled to the point range of the campaign and its perceived general utility in that campaign. 

I really like the use of Resistance. I take that in that game, Fear based attacks were regularly to be expected?

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11 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

I am making up some races and I need to know how much the following would cost.  This is a Fantasy World with a middle of the road magic.  Not High Fantasy, but there is magic and people use it.

 

Immune to Fear

Complication: Cannot comprehend Magic

 

Sounds like one of the  Thralls of Talislanta.

Psychological Complication: Cannot comprehend magic, frequently, fully impairing. Basically the character would not be able to succeed at any check to understand something magical, could perceive magic but never grasp how it works, and would not be able to do anything magical at all, whether that's activating a scroll, learning any magical skills, and so forth. That would be worth 25 points. It's also pretty impairing. At greatly impairing, the character is very primitive and still won't comprehend magical stuff, but might be able to make some checks to try. At slightly impairing, the character is more ignorant/incomprehending of magic than most people, like maybe a Cimmerian just out of the mountains. or a modern person in a magical world with only pop culture to guide them. If the complication only pertains to doing magical things, and not just general knowledge, I would downgrade it to infrequently. So the character couldn't use a wand to save their life and can't seize control of magical artifact, but still understands that mages cast spells, might have a general knowledge of what different magical orders do, can understand in a simple way that magic depends on energy or entities or whatever, and so forth. It might not be worth any points if all magical items or rituals require a Magic skill to use, and the character simply lacks it. But if the character can't use a necklace of fireballs or activate a magic carpet that requires the will of the user, that is likely worth something.

 

"Fear" in Fantasy Hero is a special effect. I can think of several things it can do. There's fear-based Presence Attacks. There are things that cause people to flee, like Mind Control. And there are fear rolls people have to make. I think the latter is just an application of Ego. Lots of Ego. Assuming this resistance is much higher than even the most strong-willed normal person, I'd say:

Fearless: +30 Ego, Only versus fear (-1/2); and +20 PRE, only to defend against PRE attacks (-1/2), only fear (-1/2). That's a hefty 30 points. But this character won't fail any normal Ego Roll related to fear without a substantial penalty, and is almost immune to any kind of presence attack that is supposed to be scary, which includes a lot of intimidation attempts. Fear spells would be pretty much useless against this character.  As long as this character isn't also a mage or some kind of omni-competent spy or something, there should be points in the budget for it.

 

An alternative construction:

Mental Defense +30, only against fear (-1/2)

EGO +30,  Only to make Ego rolls (-1/2), only against fear (-1/2)

PRE 20, only defensive, only against fear

That raises the cost to 45. But it also makes the character immune to fear-based mental blasts, and Drains based on fear that are resisted by Mental Defense.

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15 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

I am making up some races and I need to know how much the following would cost.  This is a Fantasy World with a middle of the road magic.  Not High Fantasy, but there is magic and people use it.

 

Immune to Fear

Complication: Cannot comprehend Magic

 

As others have commented above, "Immune to Fear" will depend largely on how you model Fear. If Fear was a defined type of PRE Attack (which is how I would do it), then its counter would be something like PRE, Defensive only (-1), Only vs Fear (-1 to -2). Buy as many points as you need to reduce most fear attacks to <10 points of effect.

 

Being unable to comprehend magic does not sound very limiting to me, especially in a low-to-moderate magic setting. While the character may not be able to use magic, he will generally have other options to compensate. I would consider it Infrequent, slightly limiting (10 pts).

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10 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I really like the use of Resistance. I take that in that game, Fear based attacks were regularly to be expected?

 

Not necessarily "regularly"...in the monster of the week sort of set up you might go a couple sessions and get little or no use out of it, but then get into encounters with things that rely heavily on fear / existential horror as part of their gimmick and get a ton of utility out of it all at once.

 

 

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Fantasy Hero 6th ed. already has the Fearless talent in it:

 

Fearless

 

Effect:               Power Defense (20 points) and Mental Defense (20 points), Only To Resist Fear


Description: The character possesses such great courage that virtually nothing can terrify him
— not even fear-spells or demonic fear-auras. In game terms, this counts as 20 points of Mental 
Defense and Power Defense that only apply against fear-generating powers (such as Drain PRE, Mind 
Control, and Change Environment; see page 414). Generally, the GM should rule that this provides 
absolute immunity to fear (via the Absolute Effect Rule), but he may allow some
strong fear attacks to overcome the defenses in the usual manner.


Game Information: Power Defense (20 points) (20 Active Points); Only To Resist Fear (-2) (total
cost: 7 points) plus Mental Defense (20 points) (20 Active Points); Only To Resist Fear (-2) (total cost: 7 points). Total cost: 14 points.
 

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Gandalf970, DD and Scott have good points. My group rarely uses fear and truthfully I can’t remember using  even a basic PRE attack so in out group, Fearless at 10 pts is excessive. But  as the other two noted if you use more fear based attacks in your game then it’s worth more.

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8 hours ago, drunkonduty said:

 

A lot of the write ups of fear effects, as created by different NPCs, are PRE Drains. Hence the Power Defence.

 

I just don't know why you would build a PRE Drain as working against Power Defense. How does that make much sense?

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It's due to a quirk of the system; draining a character to 0 PRE causes them to run away from danger on a forced 9- roll made each phase they are in a threatening situation. Drains work against Power Defense by default, so there you have it.

 

A character with PRE 0 must
succeed with a PRE Roll each Phase
to act offensively or remain in the
face of anything even remotely
threatening. If he fails the roll, he
flees.

 

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