Snarf

Re: Alignments Hmm, how about motivation and behavior for a two word descriptor? Instinctive Hungry for animals, Sadistic Tyrannical for evil overlords, and so on. I think working with axes could be problem if you want a really descriptive system. Clearly, there's going to be some problems writing it down if you use more than 2. You could go the route of subdividing 2 axes into hundreds of gradations, but can be kind of limiting.

Re: Variable Adders? Variable advantage is double cost, so that would be a good starting point. I can think of a few cases where a variable adder should have no cost savings. There would be no disadvantage in only being able to affect one class of mind at a time, for instance.

Re: BattleTech Heat Sinks You could just use side effects for everything like that. It's exactly what side effects are for. For instance, a laser's overheating could be done as a drain BODY and RKA, or something like that. If you want to use a disadvantage, you could use susceptibility instead of physical limitation. Susceptibility has rules that let the negative effect be created as a power and rated for APs.

Re: Extra Fast Thought How's this look? Think Fast!: +5 with mental skills, (AP 25); Only To Negate Penalties For Insufficient Time (-1 1/2), (RC 10).

Re: Hattori Hanzo Steel You could also do it like Surbrook's write-up of the Green Destiny Sword from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A 12d6 dispel versus melee weapons with 0 END.

Re: "Fantasy HERO general comments & ?" pt.1

Re: Reference Materials The Hero System GM's Screen has a lot of useful stuff. I use that for all the most common charts.

Re: "Fantasy HERO general comments & ?" pt.1 That's an interesting approach. It would be great for a dark low-fantasy sort of game. Do the players know how the corruption rules work exactly or do you keep it a secret? If they knew the exact numbers, I could see problems with people metagaming it and casting until just below their limit or loading up on luck.

Re: What about the warriors Realistically, people don't improve forever, but keep in mind Hero simulates fiction. Check out 100 year old Master Pai Mai whoop Uma Thurman's ass in Kill Bill 2 for an example of when that can happen.

Re: Imaginary Weapons The mental illusion will be believed until the target makes his breakout roll normally. If the target has some reason to believe he's being hit with an illusion, he could ignore it, but it would still appear real until the breakout roll was made. I just checked the rules for mental illusions and it looks like there are rules for hurting people with imaginary weapons on page 130. For a +10 on the roll an illusion can do BODY and for a +20 it can do BODY and STUN. But if you want to cripple arms and make them useless without doing real damage, I'd say it would be an EGO+10.

Re: How to build this weapon? I'd use an endurance reserve for that type of thing too, but Extra Time would be a lot less bookeeping and get pretty much the same effect.

Re: Regeneration On a somewhat related topic, I think the way Light is done as a form of images is just behind Regeneration in Hero's most unecessarily complex and counterintuitive official power builds. It's annoying to me how there are no particular rules that describe how it works, except in the FAQ. I'd probably make seperate powers for Regeneration and Light if I weren't using Hero Designer.

Re: What about the warriors In my fantasy game, there are magic abilities in weapons that people with the right skills can use. So, buying magic skill or EGO is a good way to diversify a rogue or light fighter type.

Re: "Fantasy HERO general comments & ?" pt.1 Since you're trying to balance this against other magic systems I'd suggest using the existing rules as a loose guideline at least. Assign a -1/4 or -1/2 Corruption Side Effect and add custom corruption point rules or whatever you want to that.

Re: Still new GM looking for long term spell answers... In that case, I should have said Continuous and Continuing Charges. I'll go back and edit out the bad advice to make sure it doesn't spread...

Re: Still new GM looking for long term spell answers... Do you own Fantasy Hero? The Lingering advantage in Fantasy Hero is definitely what you're looking for. Other than that, Continuous and Continuing charges would also do what you want.

Re: 1st time HERO System GM advice Depending on exactly how you implement your magic system, that could be done easily. Just make house rule for giving out 2 kinds of experience, EXP that can only be spent on characteristics and skills (and possibly talents and perks), and AP that can be spent on powers. Hero already has a division between mundane abilities and supernatural powers that you can use. This all depends on whether people pay points for magic, or whether it's treated as equipment that costs money. With magic items it could go either way. You'll want to make sure people pay points in some way for their powers if you use character points as your control mechanism.

Re: 1st time HERO System GM advice I don't know much about FF7, but I'm starting a game based on FF: Crystal Chronicles. The magic in that game is also based on collecting items, but is pretty different in other ways. One thing I've found is that the balancing factors built into the video game can sometimes translate over to an RPG really well. For instance, the balance between weapons and magic in FF:CC can translate right over to Hero. Weapons are more reliable and faster. Magic is slower and leaves you vulnerable, but can accomplish unusual things like ranged attacks, AOE attacks, paralyzing enemies, and hitting vulnerabilities. Not only does this make fighters and mages equally useful, but it forces the group to use teamwork. So, it's worth putting some thought into understanding the design decisions in your source material.

Re: World creation help (Magic system question) Interesting idea. It sounds good to me, but keep in mind spells bought outside the multipower will have the advantage of being usable in multi-power attacks. You might want to make a house rule or a limitation that restricts that, if you want the side spells to be totally inferior.

Re: 1st time HERO System GM advice There's a lot of good advice in Fantasy Hero about fine tuning the balance of magic systems and solving problems that can come up. It has advice for making weapons and armor too. All the rules are in the basic book, but it gives you the knowledge in how to apply them that an experienced GM would have. I don't think there should be any problem with having potions heal a predictable amount. Just use the standard effect rules, 1 Die of Similified Healing w/ Standard Effect = 1 BODY and 3 Stun.

Re: Player-Built Characters... I do pretty much the same thing with new players. With players who know the Hero System, I do a compromise between the two extremes. They make their character but they talk to me before and after they make it, and there's usually some revisions.

Re: Pokémon HERO To me, the closest thing to special defense is Power Defense, but I digress. Anyways, although it doesn't list it on sheets normally, you actually do have a seperate Offensive Ego Combat Value and Defensive Ego Combat Value. It's just listed as one stat because the two stats are normally the same. Kind of like how you sometimes see OCV and DCV just written as CV. If you want to buy OECV and DECV seperately, just do it the same ways you do it with normal CV. The most typical way to do this is with Combat Skill Levels. Figure out what equivalents are and use the appropriate costs. For instance, OECV with one attack is two points, a general purpose ECV CSL would be 5 points, and so on. You may want to apply limitations to the CSLs like "Only For DECV (-1)" or invent new CSLs based on the cost of the existing ones, to get the precise effect you want. Another way to do it, which is appropriate if you think special defense is always on and not flexible, is to just buy EGO and apply a limitation that it's "Only for OECV" or "Only for DECV." Another way is to look at how much it would cost using the normal rules, and invent a new stat or power with a similar cost. It all depends on how much work you're willing to do and how picky you are about the details.

Re: Pokémon HERO I'm not totally sure what you're asking, but I'm pretty sure the answer to your question is yes. Could you elaborate a bit more?

Re: Active Defense Rolls DCV is the Hero Equivalent of active defense. It's the exact same thing, except it factors into your opponents roll instead of you having to roll it yourself.

Re: Teamwork I've used it as a RSR for powers that are based on multiple characters combining in one huge attack with precise timing.