Wizard

Re: Do opposed skill rolls work? The way I see it is that for there to be a opposed skill roll there has to be a clear initiator of the action, someone who declares I am trying to do something. I refer to the initiator as the attacker in the examples below. There also has to be someone that declares they are going to stop the attacker from doing something, the defender. A burglar is trying to sneak past a guard. This makes the burglar the attacker and the guard the defender. If the burglar fails his skill roll he automatically gets noticed by the guard. A guard is trying to find a burglar as he has reason to believe someone is in the building. This makes the guard the attacker and the burglar the defender. If the guard fails his skill roll, he automatically fails to locate the burglar. The guard and burglar now sit down to a game of chess (yeah, the burglar got caught). Neither the guard (chess skill 11-) or burglar (chess skill 9-) are the initiators so instead of an opposed skill roll they both roll skill rolls. The guard rolls a 14 and the burglar rolls a 10. Both failed their skills and both played terrible games, but as the burglar failed by the least amount, he won the chess game. In the case of a draw in a chess game, I suppose you declare a stalemate. For actions that need someone to win, then either the win goes to the character with the highest controlling attribute or just re-roll. Another way to handle the chess game would be by using the Task Difficulty rules on page 23 of the APG. The guard and burglar would just keep rolling until their Task Difficulty reaches zero. In other words an opposed skill roll does not apply where two or more characters are trying to achieve the same result. If five characters sit down to play poker they are all trying to win for themselves. Their main goal is not to stop someone else from winning, even though by definition that is what would happen, but it is for them to win. Hopefully that makes sense.

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #1: The Cover! Awesome cover. Very inspiring .

Re: 6th Edition Books on eReader?

Re: Interesting Announcement: HERO System Skills The Ultimate Skill is the only 5E book to sit among my 6E books on the bookshelf. Great to hear that it's going to get the 6E treatment . Just a thought, since the page numbers are going to be kept that means we will see Charm on page 293, between Security Systems and Shadowing.

Re: Strength Minimum This could be an option. Something I need to think about. Thanks for the idea.

Re: Strength Minimum

Re: Strength Minimum

Re: Strength Minimum Yeah there is. This is my whole problem. The Butterfly Sword has an advantage over the Broad Sword. If both are being wielded effectively I would expect the Broad Sword to have the advantage over the Butterfly Sword.

Re: Strength Minimum The way I see it is that the person wielding the higher STR Min weapon is wielding it just as effectively as the person with the lower STR Min weapon as he has sufficient strength to do so. So both combatants are at an equal skill level. The difference is that the higher STR Min weapon has more chance to deflect or otherwise counter the lower STR Min weapon.

Re: Strength Minimum Then it's a good rule . Yeah, my main aim is to reflect the strength minimum so players have a reason to make a choice. I understand what you are saying but I suppose I am more interested in the game mechanic side of things and as I am not playing a historical game those things don't matter that much to me. If I went to a blacksmith today, told him to make me a Butterfly and a Broad Sword that reflect the statistics in the list. I personally would expect the Butterfly Sword to be better in some situations than the Broad Sword and vice versa. I like to believe similiar items, even if they are not equal, tend to balance themselves out. It all depends on the circumstances.

Re: Strength Minimum My main reason is to give the players a game mechanic reason to choose a Broad Sword over a Butterfly Sword. Swashbuckling is not something I am aiming for so I don't mind if it suffers a bit.

I have been pondering about the effect of Strength Minimum on various weapons. For instance the Butterfly Sword from HSMA has the same stats as a Broad Sword but has a STR Min of 9 compared to 12. Not a great difference but still a difference. This got me thinking that maybe there should be a gaming mechanic that gives the players a choice between the two weapons. I was thinking of something like: A character wielding a weapon of a lower STR Min then the opponent they are attacking suffers a -1 OCV penalty. Use a STR Min of 0 for an unarmed character or for one with a lower Strength then the STR Min of the weapon he is wielding. If two hands are use on a one-handed weapon or one hand is used on a one-and-a-half-handed weapon use the normal rules to determine if the character can effectively wield the weapon but use the weapons original STR Min when using this rule. For the following examples lets try a few combats between some combatants. We have Alfred (STR 12) using a Broad Sword (STR Min 12), Bruce (STR 10) using a Butterfly Sword (STR Min 9), Colin (STR 10) also using a Broad Sword and Darren (STR 13) and he is unarmed. Alfred attacks Bruce, Alfred does not get a penalty as the weapon he is using has a higher STR Min then Bruce’s. Bruce attacks Alfred and gets a -1 OCV penalty as his sword has a lower STR Min then Alfred’s. Now it’s Colin’s turn to take a swipe at Bruce, Colin gets a -1 OCV penalty as even though his sword has a STR Min of 12, his Strength isn’t high enough to wield the sword effectively and thus his STR Min is reduced to 0 for the sake of this rule. If Colin used both hands on his sword, his STR Min would be 12 as his strength in now high enough to wield the sword effectively. Now all of them make an attack on Darren. None of them have a penalty as Darren’s STR Min is 0 since he is unarmed. If Darren attacks either Alfred or Bruce he is at a -1 OCV penalty, while if he attacks Colin he has no penalty as Colin’s STR Min is 0 due to his lack of strength to wield his sword effectively. The way I am looking at it is that a character wielding a weapon with a higher STR Min than his opponents has a combat advantage as long as his strength is high enough to wield the ‘superior’ weapon. I suppose you could say that the higher STR Min weapon has an intimidating effect on the wielder of the ‘inferior’ weapon who now needs to take extra care to get a hit in.

Re: A/R Cost of a Broad Sword Ahhh, of couse, my silly mistake . So it should be 31/12. So that makes the HSMA entry correct and the one in 6E2 incorrect. I will report it as errata.

I am fairly new to the HERO System and trying to get my head around things. I was looking at the entry for the Broad Sword on 6E2 204 and it has an A/R Cost of 32/13. Then I looked at the Butterfly sword on HSMA 257 and even though it has the same characteristics as a Broad Sword its A/R Cost is 31/12. Then when I work it out I get 31/11. HKA 1d6+1 (20 Points), Reach +1m (1 Point), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (31 Active Points) OAF (-1), STR Minimum (12; -½), Real Weapon (-¼) (total cost: 11 points) Is there something I am forgetting or are the entries in the tables incorrect?

DCV Modifiers Table (6E2 37). There are a number of entries, such as Entangle and Sleeping, with a DCV listed as -0. I expect these should be just 0 (no minus sign). Is this the best place to report errata related issues?