Alcamtar

Re: How To Run Interesting Starship Battles Wow Goldenage, that sounds awesome! We've been using Full Thrust but this makes me want to use Hero...

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete YES!! This sounds awesome, just what I've been wanting. I can hardly wait...

Re: Realistic Monetary Systems in FH

Re: Realistic Monetary Systems in FH Just wanted a comment on a couple of things... From wikipedia: "Gold coins in 10th and 11th century England were valued at two shillings sterling. The gold:silver ratio was 1:9." Byzantine gold coins were called Bezants and were modeled on solidi. The arabic Dinar was generally equivalent to a bezant in weight and value. Since a bezant or dinar was the weight of three silver pennies (4.5g), its value should be roughly 27d. Two shillings is 24d.

Re: Fantasy Superheroes

Has anyone done a fantasy superheroes game? I'm not normally a supers fan, but after watching some of the recent superhero movies (Capt America, Thor, etc) it looks like a lot of fun for an over the top action game. It also reminds me a lot of high level D&D, except that system doesn't really capture superhero action. But that's why we have HERO! My basic idea for a fantasy superheroes game is to take some of the supers tropes and inject them directly into a fantasy setting. For me that probably resembles D&D, which is fine since both supers and D&D seems to have a kitchen sink, gonzo, anything goes philosophy. Some of the ideas I have in mind: - The PCs are superhuman, not merely skilled men. They are dragonblooded sorcerers, divinely appointed (and gifted champions), ogres wielding demon swords, giants, ordinary elves... - The local government relies on the team to handle the "big problems". No pussy footing around in dungeons fighting orcs by the handful... the PCs deal with thousand year old necromancers, dark lords, dragons, demon princes, etc. And of course supervillains. - There are supervillains. Some of them have "agent" minions. - The whole thing has a four-color comic book "Be a hero!" flavor. Don't try to get all realistic and serious. - The focus is on defeating, not killing. Villains are recurring characters. PCs should have a code against killing. - The campaign is designed more like a soap opera than a quest. The PCs have a base city, there is a cast of recurring characters, each PC probably has a nemesis, and the PCs are heavily tied into the setting with DNPCs, etc. They might even have secret IDs. I hate to say it but the old He-Man cartoon pretty much fits this model. I don't want to to be as cheesy as that though, and I want it to be more epic than that. It would be an opportunity to fight the really big epic monsters, travel the planes, basically do all the high-level fantasy stuff that we never really seem to get to in regular games. And do it in a BIG way. This would also address an issue I've sometimes had with Fantasy Hero: it can he *hard* to kill your foes unless the PCs are significantly more powerful (read: employ excessive force.) Sometimes you want the orcs to just go down with a single chop and not have to worry about them. Especially when there's a whole army of them and the GM doesn't want the bookkeeping! Beefing up the PCs so they are slinging around DC 12 attacks should pretty much solve this problem. As long as you're going that far, it's a small step to fantasy-champions. The non-lethal supers setup also solves another problem in fantasy hero: spending a couple hours statting up a bad guy, only to have them slaughtered dead as soon as the PCs meet them. Too much work! If I'm going to go to that much work, I want them to stick around for a while. Of course I want to preserve the fantasy flavor, so I'm thinking: - No spandex. - No inherent flight, unless it is a racial ability (wings) or a device (flying carpet). - Magic items instead of technology. This is really just a matter of SFX. Of course if tech was allowed then it would turn into a sort of "sword and planet" style setting which could be cool, but it might also start to just feel like a regular supers game. - No cosmic VPPs. Magic should usually be in the form of spells and should feel like magic, not superpowers. - I'm wondering if a fantasy setting needs to prefer killing attacks over normal attacks? That seems to be the norm in fantasy, so violating it might seriously alter the fantasy flavor. I suppose important baddies could always be immortal and not permanently killable - you can chop them into hamburger, but unless you seal them in a magical vault they'll be back. Hmm, this might actually cover the fantasy aspect better. Cause you really don't want to wade through 10,000 orcs and only do normal damage. (Well, enough normal damage and it won't matter...) Anyway has anyone done this? I'm sure you have, so what I'm really asking for is what you recommend as genre conventions, best practices, general advice, etc.

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction?

Re: Project WyrmStar Books Available In Hero Store What is Project WyrmStar? I can't find anything about it on Google. My guess is this is a HERO conversion of Dragon*Star?

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us While ships seem to disappear instantly, it actually takes 3.5 days to fully enter hyperspace, followed by an instantaneous jump, then another 3.5 days to exit... at after which point the ship "appears". Maybe 3.5 days is the temporal quantum unit of hyperspace transition?

Re: Campaign Classic: Mythic Egypt Great stuff Susano! Do you, um, have a copy of Mythic Greece?

Re: Magic Items go here!! Nice to see some Shadow World stuff!

Re: God of Redemption A few thoughts. Merely confessing guilt is judgement, not redemption. Redemption is all about absolution, removing the guilt so that the formerly guilty are not punished. To do that, you have to pay for the wrong... and to do that, you have to decide "how" wrong it is, in order to determine a just payment. In Christian theology, sin is blasphemy of cosmic significance that has a mandatory death sentence - someone has to die for it. It cannot just be forgiven, it must be paid. You can make it less serious in your game, although the more serious it is, the more dramatic it is. In some respects redemption might be seen as the opposite of judgement, since it's goal is forgiveness. Again in Christian theology this is mercy, since someone else has paid on your behalf, but if sinners pay their own way (through some sort of penance or repayment) then there is no mercy involved, only justice. Redemption of course requires judgment - you have to judge first in order to recognize the wrongdoing and determine the proper consequence - but judgment is not the goal, only a step along the way. Or seen another way, the goal is that future judgment will show you to be clean and guiltless. It is easy to confuse judgment and redemption. Some followers with a judgmental bent may focus exclusively on that aspect, neglecting or minimizing the absolution. Those of a forgiving nature may neglect the justice and promote "cheap" redemption (without proper payment). The unforgiving may still hold your sins against you even after redemption is accomplished. Redemption may also be hard for some to accept, since it may seem to violate justice. Many people would find it hard or impossible to swallow if Hitler were redeemed (thus becoming guiltless), for example. Are some sins unforgivable? Are some sins forgivable, yet people can't accept it? (Again the Hitler example. Or if someone murders your family, maybe society can eventually forgive them, but can YOU?) What is the method of redemption? This is very important. Christianity is so "easy" (requiring no action or penance) that people find it hard to accept, they want to pay for it with some action or they don't "feel" forgiven. On the other hand, it demands humility and public confession, which some cannot bring themselves to. And it demands belief in something absurd (resurrection). In many ancient religions, absolution required blood sacrifice. If it's not too offensive this might be worth considering. If redemption were easy, everyone would do it. What keeps people away? If a blood sacrifice is required for example, some may refuse redemption because it offends them, or because they cannot afford an animal. (Or maybe in your religion, the animal is consigned to hell in your place, and some are uneasy with that.) What is the benefit of redemption? That is, what happens if you are not absolved? What are you escaping? Does redemption apply only to some (those guilty of big obvious things) or does it apply to everyone, because everyone has done something wrong? Do different sins have different penalties? It might be worth creating a short list of offenses and prescribed remedies: if you steal, you have to repay seven times the amount.

Re: Do opposed skill rolls work? Gambling: If it is really pure chance, there is no skill involved and you should just be flipping a coin. If skill comes into play in a game of chance, that means someone is trying to cheat. Therefore, Gambler A attempts to cheat. Gambler B wins, meaning that gambler A failed to cheat, and the game is fair (so flip a coin). Had gambler A succeeded, then the win is automatic and no coin flip is necessary. If BOTH are trying to cheat, then presumably two sets of opposed rolls would be needed, one for each attempt. Persuasion: Again, person A is trying to persuade person B, who wants to not be persuaded. If B wins, it just means that nobody was convinced was made. And if both are trying to persuade the other simultaneously, well... if the internet has taught us anything it's that neither will succeed!

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Venus has essentially a single climate. If you consider "hell" to be a climate.

Re: HERO System Grimoire now in the Hero Store! Is this an update of the previuos Grimoire, or all new content?

Re: LOTR thoughts Morgoth had many servants, Sauron was only the chief of them. When Morgoth was removed, his servants remained and Sauron gained control over them and became the new chief. It seems likely that after Sauron is overthrown, other (lesser) maiar may remain. Perhaps these are more like local demons, but they may still be powerful enough to assemble armies and terrorize the countryside. Certainly they might be worshipped locally by cults as godlings. Balrogs would certainly fit in this category, as would Shelob, though there could even exist more powerful maiar who are still able to assume fair form. I wonder too: there were one, three, seven, and nine rings... why not five? Maybe there were five rings of great power that never entered into the story, possibly being given to lieutenants or something. In the fourth age, these might still be extant and could augment the power of five would-be dark lords, competing with each other to become pre-eminent.

Re: How to introduce group to the Hero System? Did you look at this thread? If they're coming from D&D it might solve the character creation issue.

Re: Yet another D&D to Fantasy HERO conversion Very interesting, it reminds me of Dungeon Hero, but is a much simpler approach. I was toying with updating Dungeon Hero from 4e to 6e but... egad! I really like how magic is distilled down into a simplified description. It is much easier to read and understand at a glance, and I think it would encourage creativity while discouraging rules lawyering. There is still enough information to reconstruct a stat block, if that is needed, but one rarely needs it. The playable simplicity here is brilliant, much better than the D&D source material. One glitch I noticed, the Cleric and Wizard characterse get the 'Universal' spell list, and 10 pts of spells... but neither of these spell lists contains 10 pts worth of spells! Also as Vondy pointed out this evidently uses a MP, not a VPP.

Re: D3 Games Fantasy PDFs Now Available The HERO store will not let you download a free document by itself. I tried, and even with a valid credit card it won't complete the order.

Re: Top 10 most powerful scrolls Genocide - This was a spell from the roguelike game LARN. It destroys the species of your choice, instantly removing them from the game as if they never existed.

Re: Using Unlimited Mana with HERO Thanks for hashing this all out, alms66, I'll probably end up using it too

Re: Using Unlimited Mana with HERO I was wondering about that. Well, it can, it just depends on what sort of hoops you want to jump through. For example: each power is required to use no END. take a physical complication on the character, defined as: (the verbatim rules for Umana, plus a formula for computing the mana for each power) That is simple and it is rules legal. It is not the traditional Hero way to do things though, and basically uses a loophole to insert an entire custom subsystem into the game. But still technically rules legal. Interesting, that never occurred to me...

Re: Using Unlimited Mana with HERO Umana is a magic system that limits your total usable energy per day. As such, it's worth mentioning that any GURPS wizard worth his salt will know some spells well enough that they are free. (Cost is -1 mana if you know it at 15-, -2 mana if you know it at 20-, etc). Hero, GURPS, and Umana all allow a form of "free" spell casting. In Hero, you recharge END fast enough to cast minor spells all day long, but you are limited in how much you can use in a short period, and there is no daily limit. In GURPS, minor spells are free, and you have a highly restrictive short-term limit with a rather modest recharge rate, but no daily limit. With Umana, you have free minor spells and no short-term limit, but consequences for heavy use, and it also takes around four days to fully recover from heavy spell use, or longer if you exceeded your threshold. It trades lots of moderate spells spread over time, for a few super powerful spells all at once (plus unlimited trivial spells), but then a long recovery period. But since minor spells are free, it really only limits moderate to large spells. "Sure I can maintain this light all day, and blast ruffians with my fireballs endlessly, but I must draw upon my mystic reserves to do anything useful to that dragon..." As such, any system (including my previous post) that does not maintain relatively unrestricted access to "minor" spells is not really capturing the flavor or balance of Umana. One way to do this using, say, the END approach, would be if spells below say 15 AP are allowed to be purchased at zero END cost. Or using the idea I posted, the first 5 real points don't get added to the tally, making all spells cheaper and small spells free. It occurs to me that Umana could also be approximate very simply by saying that the first 1-2 END from a spell apply against your normal END, but all remaining END come from an END reserve with a slow daily recovery. Your personal END will refresh fast enough that it's not really limiting, and the remainder work like LTE. Though I still think real points are a better balancer than END.

Re: Using Unlimited Mana with HERO Umana is probably my favorite magic system ever. I love the fact that it does not impose artificial restrictions on a wizard, he limits his own casting voluntarily. alms66, I agree with you on using real points instead of END. The whole END cost thing is nice and "rules legal" and the END reserve is a clever way to implement this. But END is not really a fair measure of a spell's power unless the GM prohibits the "reduced END" and "Extra END" modifiers, and requires all spells to use END. In any case, Umana is not "rules legal" in GURPS so why should it be in Hero? Instead of overloading existing systems, why not just create a new power? In that case, all we have to do is adjust the numbers to work for Hero: Threshold (MANA): base 120, cost 1/5 to increase Recovery (MREC): base 30, cost 1/2 to increase Tally: every spell adds its Real Cost to the tally. Tally is reduced by MREC once daily. Calamity checks: required if Tally exceeds Threshold. Each 20 pts of excess incurs a cumulative -1 penalty to the calamity check. Improving the Calamity check can be done with PSLs NOTE: threshold and MREC cannot be "sold off" below their base levels, so non magic using characters cannot mine these for extra CP. However a wizard could reduce these arbitrarily to fit a character concept by taking a Physical Complication.

With the new a-la-carte pricing for characteristics in 6E, I have found that the first thing players to is pump their OCV and OCV up to the max, and buy one or two OCV skill levels with their favorite weapon. From a min-max point of view this is smart, but then you lose the tactical interest of allocating skill levels, not to mention ending up with very high CVs. This is also very good cost break for wizards since OCV/DCV apply to both ranged and weapons. I was thinking about why 4E seemed so much "better" (to me) for FH than 6E and it occurred to me that it is easier to min-max characters because there are fewer limits... and those limits at do exist (available weapons, available armor, skill penalties, ec) can easily be gotten around with new powers (deadly blow, combat luck, PSLs, etc). Another factor I think is that in the last decade D&D has gone from "swords and sorcery" to "fantasy superheroes" and players build the sort of characters they are used to in D&D. Anyway one way to restore a limit would be to make the "characteristic maxima" dynamic and based on figured formulae. NCM are GM discretion anyway, so this avoids messing with 6E core mechanics or prices. Cha. Maximum OCV DEX/3 DCV DEX/3 MOCV EGO/3 MDCV EGO/3 PD STR/2 ED CON/2 This means if your DEX is 14, your maximum OCV is 5... it will cost 10 pts per +1 OCV beyond that. This will encourage players to add some skill levels, unless their character is extremely dextrous. The goal here is to get away from D&D 4E level superheroics and encourage more of a sword & sorcery balance, defining some simple rules so the GM doesn't need to nerf every proposed character build.