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Citizen Keen

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  2. Third Magic System (Please Help)

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Third Magic System (Please Help)

     

    Animal totems? Born under a certain totem means you can become a wolfmen, elephantmen, etc?

    Are these shapechangers, or are they permanently of two parts?

     

    I'd just create a system of multipowers based on each type of animal - if they're shapechanging, have it linked to shapeshift, so to get eagle eyesight, they actually have to have eagle eyes at the time.

     

    But if permanently a conglomerate of human and animal - exaggerate the animal powers to a huge amount. The more powerful the mage, the more they exaggerate the power.

     

    I'd attache a price as well though, using animal powers gives animal side effects - loss of intelligence, a need to behave instinctively (ie predators, must hunt down prey afterwards, herd animals must congregate with others of their kind)

     

    Sorry.

     

    The fact that they're animals should have nothing to do with their magic, or very little. They're just another permanent species. They don't shape shift, they don't invoke their own beast powers. In fact, certain species even eat their own animal equivalents.

     

    I just want a third, interesting magic system. My friends want to start a new campaign, and want to utilize the freedom of HERO and get away from D&D. So, I want a crazy magic system that doesn't resemble the D&D magic system. But I don't want to use Valdorian Age magic - I want the magic to be as combat viable as any other, without the (necessarily) lengthy casting times or the favor system.

     

    I just threw the animal race description out their for completeness' sake. The only thing I care about this magic is that it be different from the other two in what it can and cannot do.

  3. Third Magic System (Please Help)

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Aloha!

     

    Looking to make a third magic system for my campaign. Something dynamic and powerful, balanceable, and unique and interesting. I am not above blatantly stealing from other material. I want a system that can definitely do things, and has areas it can't touch (for plausible reason, not metagame "arcane can't heal" reasons). Every racial grouping can use every magic, but each magic system belongs to a racial grouping, and is strongest in them.

     

    The first system I have is classic elementalism, and belongs to the races most easily described as elementals and those of elemental bloodlines. Elemental magic is pretty obvious. It consists entirely of summoning elementals to do your bidding (think Valdorian Elementalism, if a little more showy). Magic items are nigh impossible to make with elemental magic.

     

    The second system belongs to the races of man - humans, halflings and giants. It is essentially psionics with some mumbo jumbo. It consists of the sfx of telekinesis, empathy and esp - using powers of force to influence the world. You can make force fields and force bolts and all kinds of magic items, but you can't summon lightning or invoke the spirit of the bear or anything like that.

     

    The third racial group is all the combinations of man and and animals - elephant men, wolfmen, et cetera. I want a funky and combat useful magic system to go with them...

     

    I'm kind of stumped right now and thought I'd hit up the hero forums for help.

  4. Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again

     

    In an old D&D3E campaign I used to run, I had a player who was aware of the metagame easiness of a dungeon, and knew I used them when I hadn't prepared an adventure for the evening.

     

    [tangent]

    My GM style is very transparent -

     

    Prepared: "You must infiltrate the Earl's Court and convince him to open up the land across the River Nerele for expansion, in order to drive away the wood nymphs who are draining his domain of magic."

     

    Unprepared: "So, there's this cave..."

    [/tangent]

     

    He would go to the most extraordinary, in-character lengths to sidetrack a dungeon adventure. He was an easy player when I had a well-crafted adventure, but when I did a dungeon... He would go into town and try to rouse a lynch mob to go into the dungeone, he would use his magic to divert a river to drown the dungeone, he would do anything he could to destroy the dungeon without ever going in. He didn't care about the treasure - he cared about making me work for it.

  5. Game: Skirmish

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Game: Skirmish

     

    [criticism]

    Is this meant to be a game played "in game"? I could see characters mentioning/playing Rue - it's relatively simple, with simple pieces. This game feels rather anachronistic - I can't see it being created in a fantasy context, when paper was (arguably) rare.

    [/criticism]

  6. Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

     

    Whenever the topic of HERO being used for sci-fi settings comes up in the wider gaming community' date=' one of the most common requests I see is for a conversion of [i']GURPS Transhuman Space[/i]. This is certainly a high-quality book with the GURPS recognition factor, and "transhumanism" is one of the more popular cutting-edge topics - sort of an evolution of the older "cyberpunk" concept. Transhumanism actually gets only brief mention in Star HERO, so there's probably plenty of room to develop it.

     

    In response to this post, I was over at sjgames.com reading about Transhuman Space, and I saw this:

     

    http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/transhumanspace/highfrontier/

     

    Can anyone confirm or deny that that's a typo? 44 pages for $25?! Crazay!

  7. Your Costume is always Clean.

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Your Costume is always Clean.

     

    I have always used (what I consider to be) a very elegant solution:

     

    Just make it a campaign rule that, save for extenuating circumstances, the condition of a character's costume is related to his health. Stun or Body, depending on the style of campaign. Stun works really well, because it allows for characters (I'm thinking Ultimate Spiderman in my head) to run through a sewer, get in a fight, come out all stinky and torn, wipe grime off their costumes, mutter a "Yech!" and in two turns, they're completely back to pristine condition. Worked out nicely for me.

  11. Character: Priest

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Character: Priest

     

    Two thoughts:

     

    1.) Why'd you build the Sap with Energy Blast? Seems to be more of a Hand Attack.

     

    2.) If I remember correctly, Luck is generally rolled at the beginning of each evening's sessions. How would that work built as a power requiring incantations and gestures? As a GM, personally, I wouldn't allow it.

  15. Starships

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Starships

     

    Do you own Star HERO? This excellent resource goes into detail regarding different ways GMs can give the HEROs a Starship. Just giving it to them outright, having the ship owned by a patron, as well as other options in addition to the two you listed. It also goes into the implications of each choice. I highly reccomend getting Star HERO.

  17. Manless

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Manless

     

    Disclaimer: This may seem like I'm being a smartarse, but I'm not. I repeat, I am not... well not this time anyway.

     

    So, KS, I've always wondered about this. Do you assume physical abilities to be 'basic' like two arms, two legs, sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, breathing, eating, sleeping, bipedal locomotion, inference, reasoning, vocal ability... etc.? Or do you slot out each 'ability' into a point-based structure to create a new character all the way from the ground up? How much groundwork do you use to start with, and is the groundwork template point-based?

     

    Maybe you can show us a 'human package deal' if you want to save the time.

     

    ...boy that didn't come off as smartarsey as I initially thought.

     

    Well, I can see it being something like the Valdorian Age "races," in which you can't buy an "Elf" package, instead you buy a "Wood Elf" or a "High Elf" or whatever, and you can't assume you're a human, but instead buy a "Northerner" or "Westerner" package.

     

    Am I right or am I right?

  18. Sci-fi wear swords?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Sci-fi wear swords?

     

    A zero-g martial art makes sense to me - a la dirty infighting, and so forth. A zero-g fighting style, with weapons, doesn't make as much sense to me. It seems to push for guns. Can anyone with a little more knowledge of either zero-g-ness or swords explain this to me?

  20. Manless

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    First off, I'm going to cross-post this to the Star HERO forum, so if I reference aliens, et cetera, know why.

     

    I am curious if anybody here on the boards has run a campaign with no humans in it, and what kind of effects it had. What are the implications of a game where every race is an alien?

     

    Arguably humans are the backdrop against which a game occurs. It does not require a package deal to be human - the rules assume as much when you sit down. The blank slate against which we craft our characters is a blank, human slate.

     

    Obviously, we don't lose that barrometer when we play with all aliens. We are still human. I mean, I assume so. Everything is still relative to us. Elves still have nightsight, which we don't. Centauri still have tentacle genitalia, which we don't.

     

    But at the same time, having no humans in the campaign certainly changes the tone. This can be played out in one of two ways:

     

    New Backdrop - In a world dominated by Elves of different types, with small pockets of Dwarves, Giants, and Orks, Elves become the new backdrop. Characters operate from the assumption that most people are Elves, and that everybody else deviates from a normal, Elven standard. You could go so far as to make Elves the default player point starting. For 0 Character points, you have a STR of 8, and Nightvision and Longevity. Everyman powers and altered starting characteristics.

     

    Or...

     

    Cosmopolitan Backdrop - In a galaxy modeled on a humanless version of the Star Trek world, then there's a little bit of everything. You have your major players (the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, the Vulcan/Trill/Bajoran dominated Federation), the minor players (and by minor I mean less frequently occuring) and everyone mixes and everyone's different, and no one race is the default. There is no backdrop. You have to buy a racial package deal to play.

     

    I'm sure there are other implications that I haven't tought of. Any thoughts?

  21. Power Armor 'themes'

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Power Armor 'themes'

     

    I have always liked Power Armor characters whose Powered Armor's primary function is to amplify his/her minor, innate abilities. Psychic amplifiers, or whatever. Really, technology-amplified supers are my favorite. Spiderman, Wolverine, whomever. Love 'em.

     

    cK

  23. Sci-fi wear swords?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Sci-fi wear swords?

     

    Personally, I feel it really boils down to a deep desire to overlap our two favorite genres...

     

    Frankie: "I wanna blaster!"

    Billy: "I wanna magic sword!"

    GM: "Let's play Star Wars! Yay!"

     

    That comes across as more denigrating than I intended, but whatever. The point being that we can justify all we want, but really, we use giant swords because they look really cool. A lot cooler than a lame gun. In the right circumstances. Sometimes lame guns look very not lame. Point being - people like to have their cake, and eat it, too!

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