Surgo

Kickstarter: someone mentioned in another thread that starship combat rules were punted from Star Hero to the never-complete 6e Vehicles book. I'd be willing to back such a book.

This is the idea, to avoid the aforementioned bookkeeping nightmares:

(Total: 30 Active Cost, 13 Real Cost) +20 PRE (20 Active Points); Only When Enemy Attempts To Move Through Threatened Melee Area (-1), Only For Presence Attacks (-1/2) (Real Cost: 8) <b>plus</b> +1 SPD (10 Active Points); Linked (PRE; -1/2), Only for Attacks Against Intimidated Target (-1/2) (Real Cost: 5)

In English: You succeed on your PRE attack, you can immediately use the extra SPD for an attack (up to once per turn, since it's one SPD). The concept: avoid messing around with the SPD chart at all, tie any extra actions to success on the presence attack.

4 minutes ago, LoneWolf said:

Don’t buy extra SPD buy extra PRE. 

The point of the SPD was to be able to use it as part of the "you get to act before this person" result -- the SPD would only be for taking that action.

That's viable and it might be worth buying 1 or 2 SPD limited with "only with presence attacks" or something so you can trigger the "act before X" result of the presence attack, if such a thing is possible (not sure what the build would look like or not). Similarly, the PRE could be bought limited for "only for threatened area" or something.

25 minutes ago, LoneWolf said:

This is also the way to shut down the Mexican standoff.  Instead of looking to use rules from other systems why not actually use the Hero System like it was intended. 

Dude, don't go there. Trigger is as much a part of the Hero System as Presence Attacks are.

If the game mechanics ever encourage it in a situation, it really is a game mechanical problem that has been brought out by the situation. To say they aren't behaving like action heroes is really besides the point; if we already have a way for the combat to go in mind, there's no reason to have rules at all. And you really won't convince me otherwise on this point. I'm from a school that wants game mechanics to reflect as much as possible the desired outcome.

6 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Zone of Control:  Aid OCV 3d6, Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action to reset, Character does not control activation of personal Trigger; Opponent moves towards user through radius; +1/2), 0 END (+1/2) (36 Active Points); OCV Reduction Only Works against opponent(s) who moved through threatened range (-1), Self Only (-1), Instant (only last's through attacker's next phase; -1/2). Total cost: 10 points.

 

Thanks -- this is a better way to do it I think. Cheaper, a lot less clunky and not so many side effects like Power Defense.

6 hours ago, zslane said:

Some players are trying too hard to directly map this Phases/Segments abstraction to reality, and when they do that, they both over-complicate the game and turn it into something it is not.

The problem to be solved here is how to stop people from walking around you without turning your combat into a tedious Mexican standoff between two people who each want to avoid taking action. By the rules of the game you can just...do that, and not even care. So to have some characters who you can't just straight up threaten an area and still move the game forward is alright.

 If what you are trying to do is simulate a fencer ability it should be purchased with character points.  It would probably be best done with a single attack instead of a naked advantage.  So a fencer would purchase it as a triggered HKA, where someone who is doing it bare handed would use a HTH.  The area of effect is not really appropriate for this either.  How is someone with a rapier attacking someone 4 meters away?

I don't know why everyone has assumed it's not going to be purchased with character points :-(

Yeah, I misdid the radius -- it should be 2m, not 4m. A triggered attack is another way to handle it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that in the hero system a phase is 1 second, where D&D uses a 1 minute turn

D&D turns are 6 seconds. Also, I'm not sure why this really matters. Held actions exist in D&D too; they're called "readied actions".

I went towards the power route specifically because I didn't want just anyone to have it -- specifically, it's there for really good fencers :-)

If I take 15 points of power defense  I can't be threatened for walking away any longer?

Sure, and there's also tons of other stuff you can't be threatened by anymore...the 15 points of unrestricted power defense is the problem here.

That's a fine point but it's not clear how to put it into practice when it comes to avoiding fencer A, who successfully backed fencer B into a corner, from having fencer B just walk around them on their action. At least without turning the whole thing into some bizarre Mexican standoff of each party holding their action until the other party finally does something. The goal is to at least make them pay for their tactical movement.

I've seen a number of discussions in the past about zones of control, or in D&D parlance attacks of opportunity. They have generally boiled down to either:

1) using naked trigger advantages on attacks

2) limited SPD for making attacks on people who cross your zone

3) not doing it at all and holding actions

I wondered if there was a better way to slot this concept into the HERO system than one of the above. I'm thinking directly of fencing duels, where having one party just walk around or run past the other party to be pretty lame: the idea being that the attacker can keep the defender locked into a position. So I thought about: instead of granting extra attacks (which results in clunky builds and large point costs), why not just make it really disadvantageous for the moving party to actually do the movement? So I came up with something like this:

Zone of Control:  Drain DCV 2d6, Area Of Effect Accurate (4m Radius; +1/2), Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger requires a Zero Phase Action to reset, Character does not control activation of personal Trigger; Opponent moves towards user through radius; +1/2) (40 Active Points); DCV Reduction Only Works For Attacker (-1), No Range (-1/2), Instant (only last's through attacker's next phase; -1/2). Total cost: 13 points.

(Drain limitations and their values are based on those from the Feint power in HSMA.).

So you won't get an automatic bonus attack like in D&D but your next attack, should you choose to take it, will stand a much greater chance of hitting. Thoughts on this idea? I considered doing it with a Change Environment radius but it wasn't quite clear to me how to make that mechanic work. This I think should do it. Trigger is a fairly catch-all mechanic.

I imagine this is going to seem like blasphemy to many of you. I was working on my Shadowrun rules adaptation and had some difficulty coming up with a way that players could quickly adapt content from books into HERO. Some concepts just didn't translate well. So to move this along, I decided to turn how HERO combat and skill rolls work from 3d6 roll-under into dicepools. As a reminder, in a dicepool like Shadowrun you roll a number of d6's equal to the size of your pool and every 5 or 6 counts as a "hit". Furthermore, you can "buy" a hit by spending 4 dice from your pool.

The basics: Your dicepool size is equal to your CHAR/5, plus any skill bonuses. A basic test requires one hit.

The probability: Basic skill rolls in HERO are 3d6 roll under your (CHAR/5) + any skill bonuses. At the most basic level (Characteristic of 10, skill purchased) this gives you a 50% chance of making the roll. Under a dicepool of two dice, you have a 55.5% chance of getting your one hit. Not identical, but close.

What about when we have bonuses? Let's say we've bought up +4 to the roll (or 4 dice in a dicepool system). We have a 90% chance of success with the standard HERO method. With the dice pool system you can just buy a hit, so you succeed 100% of the time.

What about harder checks? Let's say the check is for something hard so you take a -4 on the roll. We're back to 50% chance under the hero system. A -4 in dicepool land means removing 4 dice from the pool, so once again we're back where we started.

Honestly, this isn't all that interesting. The probability curve is a little skewed but...it looks similar enough if you squint at it. So why bother? Aside from making it easier to adapt Shadowrun content, I didn't like how opposed tests were working out. Also you get more variance at higher levels of dice.

My Shadowrun rules adaptation involve a lot of opposed tests. I've even extended something like the combat-as-skills rules from APG2, so combat represents opposed rolls instead of a roll against a DCV. A lot of powers have a custom advantage that succeeding on a skill roll by a certain amount gives them +5 extra character points in the power. I didn't want +1 to skill rolls to represent a raw +5 points to the power, that's a bit excessive and at high enough skill values you're just going to shift how many extra points you get by the results of that 3d6 roll. The use of dicepools means that an extra die only "counts" for 5/3 extra points in a power on average; the extra points are thus compressed down compared to vanilla HERO rolls by a factor of 3. There's still plenty of room for randomness though (and you get more variance in results with more dice, which I want). Both tests and opposed tests aren't any easier or harder (in a rough sense) by using dicepools instead of vanilla HERO rolls, but you get less impact on your powers from that extra +1.

Okay, but who cares? You could just divide how much you beat the roll with by 3 and have something that looks roughly the same. Well, like I said above, using dicepools makes it easier to lift content straight out of the SR4 books. Also I think my players will just find it easier to count. I'm finishing up a long D&D campaign with them and while I have multiple engineers as players, it's at the end of a long work day and nobody's really good at math at that point. Counting hits is easy, handling opposed tests is trivial, and there's no weird addition or subtraction involved.

Ultimately the only reason to do this is if you're a filthy blasphemer like me and like dice polls or rolling piles of d6s. Personally I love rolling piles of d6s. It's great fun. Or you want some more variance in your results.

Aside: Test Difficulty

In general, circumstances should add or remove from the dicepool instead of modifying the number of hits required. Some tasks are going to take more than one hit though. Shadowrun 4th edition recommends the following thresholds:

Easy: 1 hit

Average: 2 hits

Hard: 3 hits

Extreme: 4 hits

I'd stick with that.

Aside: Buying Skills

Familiarity is gone. Purchasing the skill gets you the characteristic roll for it (no rolling it without the purchase). After that it's a standard +1 for however many character points the book says.

It's not the cleanest write-up yet, but here's the basics. Numbers and specific rules subject to change. Some things taken from Ends of the Matrix.

Hacking powers:

• Hacking powers are called “programs”. They include all the “Mental” powers. They attack with OMCV, defend with DMCV and are soaked with Firewall (F), a form of Power Defense. Thus they must have the appropriate ACV and AVAD advantages (but unlike normal AVAD, they will still do BODY damage). Furthermore, they are only visible to the Matrix sight group; they must take the Invisible Power Effects advantage where necessary.

• All characters on a network get a Firewall of 2 for free; this represents the basic components of their personal network that defend the brain.

• See the “type” and “range” rules from Ends of the Matrix. The “Handshake” range replaces the normal power range for all hacking powers (a -0 limitation/advantage).

  • If both the target and the actor have an open connection to a third party's node they are within Handshake range of each other regardless of distance in the real world.

  • Most secure installations intentionally have low signals or use high-density blocking paint, which forces the hacker to be physically present as part of the team.

  • Your signal range is based on your commlink; see the range table below.

  • Connection range is considered a -1/4 limitation for powers. Furthermore, non-human-piloted software (like IC) can only act via Connection range and cannot open connections on its own.

  • When a connection is established, any non-LOS program can be run over the connection. Effectively, every non-LOS program has an implicit range of Connection.

• Most programs take a full-phase action, though some take half-phase actions.

• Your matrix actions are limited to a SPD of 2 without being in at least cold VR (see “VR Module” below).

Basic item: the commlink. It’s a computer in your head. Represented by a talent. Signal and number of simultaneous programs can be bought up for more character points. A basic commlink costs 5 points and gives you some everyman powers:

• Allows you to search and access the matrix.

• Allows you to communicate to anyone else on the matrix who is willing to accept communication (acts as Mind Link power).

• Allows you to see the matrix in AR (“arrows”). Sense AR, one per sense group. For equipment and powers that use arrows, characters must define which sense the arrows go to.

Commlinks, and all computer installations, have a “signal” attribute. This represents the range it can reach with its powers. By default this starts at step 0. Every step up the table costs 5 character points.

Signal / Range - Examples:

-1 / 20 cm – Nanoware Tranceivers

0 / 3m – Metahuman Brain, RFID Tags

1 / 40m – Handheld Electronics

2 / 100m – Microdrones

3 / 400m – Average Commlinks

4 / 1km – Commercial Drones

5 / 4km –

6 / 10km – Cell Towers

7 / 40km

8 / 100km – Low Orbit Satellite Links

9 / 400km

10 / 1000km

11 / 4000km Earth Orbiting Satellites

12 / 10,000km

13* / 40,000km

Hackers are particularly interested in concurrent programs. You can only use one program at a time; this limit can be increased by 1 for every 5 character points you spend.

Hacking Skills:

• Computer, Datasearch, Electronic Warfare, Hacking. All INT based. See Ends of the Matrix for details. We don’t use Cybercombat (that’s OMCV/DMCV).

• It’s a lot like Magecraft, but there are only those 4 skills. You buy the programs as talents, real cost / 10.

Hacking in AR:

• While you can hack in AR, it’s not ideal.

• Classically, AR is handled in the same manner as the classic “Head's Up Display” of the late twentieth century, but it technically Arrows can be handled with literally any type of sensory input. Some hackers have been known to pipe their matrix information through touch links as a web of tappings on their body or through audio playback as elaborate music in order to continue seeing the world unimpeded. This is still distracting, but at least you no longer have blind spots.

• Choose at character creation time which sense group you want to use for your arrows. Standard sense group rules apply, so non-sight senses aren’t targeting unless you buy it.

• When taking hacking actions in AR, you are at ½ OCV, ½ OMCV and limited to a SPD of 2.

Hacking in VR:

• The next stage in perceiving the matrix is to replace all sense data from the real world with matrix Arrows. At its crudest implementation, this literally just means that Arrows are so densely packed across one's perceptions that the input from the world around cannot be seen at all. At its ideal, it represents a whole virtual world crafted for the user in which all Arrows are incorporated and contextualized.

• On the downside, you can’t move your real body and are virtually helpless in the real world. On the upside everything is so much faster.

• To do this, you need a sim module. They come in varieties from SPD +0 to SPD +3.

Sim Module:  (Total: 30 Active Cost, 13 Real Cost) +3 SPD (30 Active Points); Only in the Matrix (-1/2), Meat Body (Your body is paralyzed, and your normal sense are overwritten with the matrix; -1/2), IIF (Commlink; -1/4) (Real Cost: 13)

Other Hacking Gear:

Why not record your senses for playback later? Make a VR movie. Open your own X-rated VR movie studio. Hell, you could even have a little television window while you’re hopping around in VR so you could see out of your meatspace eyes while you’re doing your thing.

Full Sum Rig: (Total: 11 Active Cost, 9 Real Cost) Eidetic Memory (5 Active Points); IIF (Commlink; -1/4) (Real Cost: 4) plus Transmit for standard senses (6 Active Points); IIF (Commlink; -1/4) (Real Cost: 5)

Normally your commlink limits the frequency and amplitude of signals sent to your brain to within normal human parameters. This is a very important safety feature to prevent peoples’ brains from being fried. But sometimes you just want that extra speed and intensity that getting rid of this feature gives you.

Running Hot:  +1 SPD (10 Active Points); Only for Matrix Actions (-1/2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (-3 resistant Firewall; -1/2), Extra Time (half-phase to activate, -1/4)

Running Hot:  +1 SPD (10 Active Points, 4 Real Cost); Only for Matrix Actions (-1/2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (-3 resistant Firewall; -1/2)

Programs:

Black Hammer (LOS):  Killing Attack - Ranged 1d6, Attack Versus Alternate Defense (Firewall; +0), Alternate Combat Value (uses OMCV against DMCV; +1/4), Invisible Power Effects (Invisible to non-Matrix senses; +1/2); Line of Sight Range (-1/2) (26 Active Points)

Thanks for the responses, all. I plan to post my ruleset (for this aspect, anyway) in this thread later tonight when it is complete.

You could approach cyberspace or any alternate reality the way The Strange RPG does and essentially provide a separate character sheet for each realm/reality your characters travel to. That may require more effort than you want to invest, but doing so would definitely give cyberspace a distinct feel and allow distinct rules and powers.

Definitely do not want to go this route. Not only is the hacker meant to be a unique role in the team, they are explicitly able to affect the real world including human brains with their hacking. So they should ideally be spending as many points on that as the street sam.

I like to just view Cyberspace like I would Astral Space for mages: A seperate reality, paralell to the real world, one can "Project" into while leaving the meatbody behind. (Indeed that is pretty much how Shadowrun handels it, just with some levels of seperation between "Astral" and "Cyberspace" projection).

 

There are numerous ways to build "Astral Projection" (and thus "Cyberspace Projection"):

Duplication (the Duplicate exists in Astral Space).

One of the APG's has a Projection variant of Desolidification (the projection is desolid and might even exist in another Dimension like Astral/Cyberspace).

Yeah, in Shadowrun the astral and the matrix are pretty much the same thing (or at least, in the best matrix rules they were).

I don't think I want to go with Duplication because every brain and machine needs to simultaneously exist in both realms already, with no additional fanfare. The projection variant is interesting but maybe a bit too complicated to combine with what I'm going for with signal ranges. Neat ideas though, thanks!

Virtual Reality Override: Concentrate 0 DCV; Completely unaware of surrounding environment

 

Instantly Move to Anything in Signal Range: Special Effect of having Range on your Mental Powers (?). Presumably you are going for the Shadowrun 4 Wireless Hacking over the Shadowrun 1-3 jacked in "decks?"

 

 

Keep in mind that I have not completely thought through a system yet. I am just not inclined (as you are also not) to have some elaborate EDM, Leaves Body Behind build.

This seems good. The special effects of the power range is exactly what I'm looking for. And yeah I'm going for SR4 -- I want futurism rather than retro-futurism :-) Specifically I'll be adapting the rules from Ends of the Matrix: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48836

Hacking itself will be done sort of like the Magecraft system from Killer-Shrike (http://killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/HighFantasyHERO/MagicSystems/magecraftSystem.aspx); the skill rolls are important to give it a "skill" flavor, I think. All devices have a signal range, and your hacking powers are mostly limited to your opponent being in signal range of you and vice versa. Since many installations you want to hack have intentionally low signal ranges, this forces the hacker to stay physically with the rest of the team when they want to use their cool powers. I think this has been a big issue with hacking systems in other games; you split the team up so as a result the hacking aspect of the game is left as mostly a sideshow. Not what I want in cyberpunk!

I'll post my more complete write-up tonight, now that you all have helped me figure out how to do it.

I'm happy to have it be "just" a special effect, but I need to come up with an elegant way of saying "side effect: all your senses are overwritten by cyberspace sense; can instantaneously move to and view anything in signal range".

I'm putting together a vaguely Shadowrun-inspired ruleset for my next game, to be run when my current D&D session ends. Hacking is a key part of cyberpunk but it's important to make sure that the hacker has a reason to physically be with the team, not doing it from a protected outpost somewhere.

In classic cyberpunk fashion, cyberspace is an actual place you can experience via VR. But you can also just be in the normal world and partially experience it via AR (you get "arrows" over your senses, usually sight). You get up to +3 SPD for being in VR, and while you're in AR you attack at 1/2 OMCV anywhere outside of your actual line of sight, as opposed to your normal "signal" range. But you can totally walk around hacking in AR despite that if that's your thing. The downside of VR being, of course, that you're an inert body in meatspace.

The important things that need be modeled are: every brain and every device exists in both meatspace and cyberspace, but to properly attack and perform other hacking tasks in cyberspace you need to be able to see into it (or use another sense, if you're doing it only in AR, that's pretty flavorful and cool). You get AR and the sense to see arrows for just having a computer in your head. So my questions are:

- How do I model getting the senses to see AR, for any of your sight groups? Preferably at minimal real cost, so anyone who wants one can have a computer in their head. Plus the 1/2 OMCV for hacking beyond your LOS.

- How do I model VR? I don't like extra-dimensional movement because it seems overly pricey for what is essentially a flavor concern, and I don't want to have to add Transdimensional to everything. But it is ultimately a separate dimension in the sense that it completely overwrites all of your standard senses. It's just that that's more of a drawback than a penalty (in a metagame sense, anyway), so paying the points for XDM seems counterintuitive.

I am doing something similar for a post apocalyptic game using Indesign. I have a Hero Designer template that outputs a tab seperated output similar out to the package deals/templates in the books. I can upload it here if you are interested.

Yes, please upload this.

I'm trying to put together some cyberpunk rules for a game I'd like to run. They're pretty extensive and my Google Drive document is *ugly*! I'd love to have it laid out like a proper supplement, with powers listed and looking like they do in any of the Hero books. Has anyone done this before and have a template for it? I've typeset an RPG book with LaTeX before but really, a template for any kind of typesetting system would be welcome.

The amount of work I put into a character backstory is inversely proportional to the lethality of the campaign. If I've just had a character die, I'm unlikely to put any thought into it whatsoever.

For those of you who made your own rulesets and systems, would you mind posting or uploading them? It's not so difficult to file the serial numbers off, and anything helps.

They'll be buying parts that you have already made available.

Yeah, exactly. The thing is coming up with a big mega list of these parts and pieces. I doubt I could cover all the bases so coming up with a first list, and then rules to expand the list, is what makes sense to me. I'm not doing this for a specific game, but rather creating rules for running a game in the setting -- so it's not a matter of doing it on-demand, but rather coming up with an enormous list that can be used.

I've been working on a complete ruleset for running a Star Wars game in the Hero system. The way I see it there are two difficult problems to solve which each hit one of the key points of the setting: a good system for the Force (done), and a good system for spaceships (my current issue).

You might wonder what's the problem, the rules for building out vehicles are pretty clear so just use them. While true, I find them insufficient. People aren't going to be buying their ships with character points, they're going to be doing it with in-game cash. Furthermore there are a number of different scales of vehicle that need to be supported (snubfighter, light freighter, capital ship) and things on the smaller scale should really only be able to damage things on the larger scale in certain, well-defined ways -- so smaller ships should only be able to "mount" certain types of weaponry. This could probably be handled by Active Point limitations on weapons and the power sources, but this is still a bit dissatisfying. A HUGE trope of the setting is people buying these ships that are essentially blank canvases and empty hulls, and then kitting them out. That makes a lot more sense with some form of ship-building system that's maybe a bit less free-form and is built on things like space constraints instead of point constraints.

Has anyone attempted this sort of system before me? It would be much easier if I could build on someone else's work, rather than come up with something whole-cloth.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy

Can I play too?

Sure!

Saves against lower level spells are easier to make, and every party member casting a Daze or Color Spray spell is one less attacking.

Yes, I am not contesting this, and it is why it does not work as well against groups. The point is if everyone hits them with their stunning abilities, the one guy isn't going to get to act. As long as one person on your team can act, you win by default.

I think you are making a very generous and disingenous read to conclude the time at which a cleric regains his spells is not fixed. As well, I believe there is aloso a statement somewhere in the rules that, if the cleric misses that time slot, he must meditate ASAP thereafter or cannot regain spells that day. PHB p 179; SRD at http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/divineSpells.htm. That seems to clarify matters greatly.

I do not own a copy of the Player's Handbook; we'll just have to disagree intractably on this point. I do see where people would take a different interpretation than me, however.

Lots of things can see invisible things, either by nature or by magic. A simple Detect Magic will show a magical something up there. As well, they climb the rope one by one, so it takes some time to enter the space. Relying on being undetected and unsuspected may not be all that prudent. I had a friend once refer to sleeping in the enemy fortress/caves/etc. as similar to "Breaking and entering to someone's house, gathering up half their valuable stuff, then taking a nap on their couch before finishing your robbery and leaving".

Yeah, no kidding, but you can also do basic hiding (not the hide skill). Put the entrance in a tree and it's blocked from invisible sight. Getting away from detect magic is harder, but because detect magic is duration: concentration, this is bypassible (especially if you hide in plain sight; this is D&D land, after all). The thing that really bones you is arcane sight, not detect magic.

Though most DMs seem to act like detect magic works like arcane sight does.

Having all the time in the world is generally not the case in most heroic fiction. The "one encounter, then bed down" approach lacks verissimilitude in my view. First, you don't wake up, break camp, travel 15 minutes, have a battle and go back to sleep. You aren't sleepy. So you're camping 23 hours plus. The assumption no one else is doing anything in that period seems a bit forced. The creatures in the next room just wait until you open the door and break the stasis field they reside in while awaiting adventurers, the sole purpose of their wretched existences?

D&D does not model heroic fiction well at all, so this is not surprising. The verisimilitude problem is entirely because spells like rope trick and, later, greater plane shift exist in D&D. When you have that sort of thing, you expect people to sneak off. This becomes a much larger problem in higher level adventures because you can plane shift to places where time moves extremely quickly relative to the prime (thus neatly avoiding the problems of rope trick, especially that where the world moves on without you).

A minor image of what? Minor Images provide visual and a bit of audio illusions, but affect no other senses. Fire isn't even warm, nor does its smoke smell. Please remember that Trolls have the Scent feat, so they have a pretty solid sense of smell. They aren't overly bright, but they aren't brain dead either. Illusions used creatively can be pretty potent, but they aren't without limitations.

I actually meant silent image, which is even more limited. A few ideas come to mind immediately:

1) A silent image of a rock wall or some other form of impassable screen where the party used to be. If the party moves far enough back, they're out of scent range so the trolls won't know WTF.

2) A silent image of a really big dustcloud surrounding the trolls. They'll be blinded, and scent doesn't pinpoint a creature's exact location so you get the benefits of a 50% miss chance on top of making the trolls guess which square is yours in the first place.

3) A silent image of a chasm between you and the trolls. If you want to be really fun, make it a chasm with a fire pit at the bottom. Use magical blue fire if you're feeling cheeky, so the trolls have a plausable reason to believe its smokeless (and thus not get a save). It's not "really" there but it doesn't matter: trolls aren't suicidal. They're not going to walk over it in the first place (and, because of how illusions work, they won't even get a save to disbelieve it). Even if they do get a save, lol +3 will save.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy

I don't think our views are that far apart here, so I hope you're not getting annoyed going back-and-forth with me.

Cite? I don't think there is any such thing as "stunlock" in 3.5. The closest you can come is daze

I was actually referring to daze. Worst comes to worst you can just throw all your level 1 spells at the problem (color spray stuns at any number of hit dice), but there are spells at every level that can accomplish that sort of effect. The stunlock comes into affect when you have multiple party members doing this to one guy, so there's a high probability they'll fail at least one of the saves. This isn't much of a problem in many-dude encounters.

Ummm. No. The d20SRD is here, and it says quite explicitly...

I didn't quote the whole thing here because italics and bold keep messing up in quotes for some reason. I suppose this is just a difference in interpretation -- it never says it must be the same time each day, it just says you have to pick a time and rest for an hour to regain your spells.

Also? I have the MIC PDF and just scanned it for sleep, rest and recovery. I find no such item. None of our gaming group has even heard of such an item. I'll have to be ... sceptical.

Heward's Fortifying Bedroll. Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.

And I don't think saying that the guy who wrote the rules and specifically discussed the effect of attrition of design is wrong is going to earn you a lot of pixie points.

I'm not looking to win any points.

The last party that tried ropetricking away from combat soon found their hideaway dispelled (spells can't reach into the rope trick area unless they are transdimensional, but the spell description specifically notes that the window is present on the material plane) and dropped into the midst of a welcoming party, especially collected for them.

Where on earth did they ropetrick that was visible?! Tactical fail on the allies/enemies part, heh. (But good thinking for whoever did the dispel).

Because an army of Red Wizards and minions were invading Rashamen, and we needed to catch up with the defending army before the decisive battle.

Yeah, this is the part where attrition makes sense and is completely believable. Where I specifically get off the train though is where this is always happening -- I start to wonder what the hell is up with the world.

I don't think our views are necessarily too far apart, and I'm okay with the depletion model at times. It's when it becomes too frequent that it starts to seriously strain credibility. The rest of this post is just minor stuff...

As for your suggested spells, Slay Living is Evil/Necromantic and thus not on the CG cleric's spell list

Slay Living is not [Evil], just [Death]; good clerics are allowed to cast [Death] spells (in fact they are only restricted from casting [Evil] spells (and I guess [Lawful] in your cleric's case)). Slay Living is also a touch spell, but the Cleric is an extremely durable class, they shouldn't fear moving up there. Truth be told at level 11 combat is less about "front" and "back" positioning anyway because that doesn't matter like it does at, say, level 6.

Anyway, a troll only has a will save of +3 so you should be able to instantly win that encounter with a wand of Minor Image (and depending on how your DM does illusion rules (every DM is different because they don't make any sense)), possibly even without a save. Might want to get one of those next time you're in town too :-P

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy

We're going off a real tangent here' date=' but I'm guessing part of the reason for the apparent confusion between posters is that you haven't played a lot of D&D prior to 4E (which is what most people still play). "Stunlock" is an 4E mechanism: there is not and never has been anything equivalent in earlier D&D. Nor, for that matter does "focus fire" (another MMO-style concept) really work in earlier D&D, since there is no cycling of defences, almost all of which tend to be passive in earlier versions of D&D. You [b']can[/b] inhibit movement (much harder to do in 3.75) but lockdown builds in classic D&D typically work by punishing movement, not preventing it. And high CR singleton monsters tend to have high damage/high BAB attacks, reach, SR and/or DR, all of which negate most of the advantages of lockdown. 4E was built very much with MMO styles of play in mind. So what works in WoW, or Diablo (or 4E) does not necessarily translate to the tabletop game most people have played/are playing and think of as D&D.

Err, it seems you are posting based on a completely mistaken assumption. I've only played 3e or 3.5e, and 4e once when the books first came out (and never since then). And stunlock is 100% a mechanic available there: take a look at the various caster spell lists. I don't really know what this "3.75" that you're talking about is.

Maybe fore the same reason,you're also wrong about the cleric: yes, it takes him one hour to prepare his spells: but he can also only do that at a predefined time of day: once every 24 hour cycle (3.5 PHB, column 1, paragraph 4: the same is true in 3.75). The same is true of the other classes: Sorcerors don't need to prepare spells in advance, but their spells per day are defined by the table in the 3.5 PHB on page 54. Like Clerics, it only takes wizards 1 hour to prepare spells, but they need a good night's sleep beforehand (and items like a ring of sustenance that decrease the need for sleep, specifically note that they do not affect the need for 8 hour's rest before preparing spells). The spell allotments for casters are what they get per day: no more. The same language is actually used for all primary casters, where the fact that the respective casting tables give maximum output per day is specifically noted.

The text for the Cleric is different in the SRD and open to interpretation there. I was not referring to the Ring of Sustenance, I was specifically referring to an item whose name I cannot recall in the Magic Item Compendium that explicitly lowered the rest requirement for other spellcasters.

So yes, the adventuring day is defined largely by the 24 hour spell cycle: that's where the concept came from, and why it's still valid (outside 4E). The concept of attrition is also very valid, as your own examples make clear. Yes, for sure you can blow away minions as you rise in level: that's a major design paradigm. But an equally important design paradigm is that this is attrition. Yes, you can slow down or remove a mass of minions with Blasphemy/Holy Word (design note: minions are typically character level -4 or less: above that they are regarded as level-appropriate foes). But you just used up a 7th level spell to do so, and even high level characters don't have a lot of those. That significantly degrades your capabilities for the rest of the adventuring day: especially for prepared casters - odds are good that you will have - at most - 2 of those slots loaded with Blasphemy/Holy Word and pretty good you will only have one. Again, outside 4E, attrition remains one of the defining features of D&D and D&D design (Monte Cook, in particular, talked about it at length and about how "resource management" was a crucial part of the game).

And, quite simply, Monte Cook was wrong. Blasphemy works almost equally effective at your CL - 1, because dazed is simply an extremely awesome status effect that will instantly win you the encounter. It actually gets more complicated than that because Blasphemy can and will outright kill people at your CR or higher. There are many ways to boost your caster level in the DMG alone, and this is compounded with the fact that CR and Hit Dice are not equivalent. A lot of the actual scary spellcasting guys just have artificially low HD so they simply get insta-gibbed by Blasphemy.

Anyway, Blasphemy isn't the only spell out there. Scaling down levels, you get Forcecage, Solid Fog, and...truth be told, a lot of encounters, mook or not, can be dealt with solely by Silent Image (spell level: 1).

An encounter chain doesn't have to follow the traditional minions -> level appropriate foes -> BBEG, to make use of attrition. You can, just as easily start out with a BBEG and then challenge the party effectively with minions, because by the time the party hits the minions, you can be certain that their resources will be severely degraded.

How exactly do you plan on challenging them with minions, afterward? They should still have spells two levels lower than their highest slot, and because spells are ridiculously awesome at every level they will be almost as effective. Or they can just Rope Trick themselves away and get full again the moment that spell is available to be cast.

A real life example (so to speak) comes from our current game, where a while back we ran into a single higher-CR challenge (some kind of a fey creature). It had sufficient DR that our melee types were getting just a few HP through her defences per round and sufficient SR that most lower-level spells were fizzling. In the end, we were able to drive her off with a mixture of martial attacks that avoided DR and assay spell resistance+Flamestrike to get around SR and DR. But that fight took place in the morning and cost us a couple of horses. More importantly, was the constant problem with attrition. The primary casters had used up most of their higher level attack spells and the cleric burnt off a bunch of lower level spells on healing. That gives us the choice: press on to the next village - and face any subsequent encounters at greatly decreased capacity - or return to our starting point. We pressed ahead, but a subsequent encounter with trolls - which would normally have been but a speed bump - turned into a bloody encounter, with near death for one PC, because we had burned through most of the party's magical firepower and we had to take them down in the end, in HTH combat.

After Assay Spell Resistance went through, why didn't they just use Plane Shift (or better yet, Slay Living because fey have poor fortitude saves) instead of Flamestrike (same spell level) to instantly kill her? Did the cleric not have a level 1 wand (cost: 750 gp) to use for healing? Regardless of those sorts of combat question though...that choice you presented doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. If the party wasn't on a time crunch, why wouldn't they just stop and take their rest so they would be at full power for the next encounter? If there's no penalty for doing so, there's no reason not to it and it's near suicidal (as you showed) to not do so.

More importantly - to get back on track - this is a feature that D&D doesn't necessarily share with Hero system. I don't see that as a design problem, although it is something to take into account when adjusting D&D modules.

Completely agree with you here. It's not bad, it's just different.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy

D&D wasn't ever meant to encourage simulating "4-encounter workdays," even though that is what the gaming masses gravitated towards. You're criticizing the system for not working properly when being used incorrectly while incorporating character classes that were designed post-release by people sketchy on the design parameters. There's lots of things to criticize D&D for but Challenge Rating is not one of them.

 

An adventure cycle is the time and events between full rests, full rests being the only meaningful increment of time in D&D.

I don't quite think you get it. I have never criticized Challenge Rating -- in fact, I posted a defense of the concept of Challenge Rating. The only reason I have discussed a "4 encounter workday" is because that is the standard "adventure cycle" everyone uses. What I have been discussing applies to any number of encounters/day, however. The idea of depleting resources as a whole is a complete joke.

If you think the dev team did not encourage the "4 encounter workday", what exactly do you think it encouraged? You posted earlier about some progression from fighting mooks to your-CR monsters to above-your-CR encounters all in the same day -- I'll go with that, I guess. That doesn't at all in D&D either. In addition to the many reasons stated before...

1) D&D combat is nasty, brutish, and very short. Mooks are pretty much always OHKOed by things like Solid Fog, Forcecage, and (explicitly by) Blasphemy. The spell lists in D&D are littered with a large number of spells specifically designed to kill mooks in one round without a save.

2) At-your-CR encounters with at-your-CR monsters (non-mooks) are pretty much standard, nothing to say there. If you've fought a mook encounter (or many mook encounters) before, it doesn't even matter -- thanks to point #1.

3) Above-your-CR encounters with above-your-CR monsters: this can take two forms:

* If it's one monster, it gets stunlocked, focus-fired, and dies. D&D characters are especially great at taking down a single monster in an extremely short amount of time, or keeping a single monster from moving.

* If it's multiple above-CR monsters, then we enter TPK territory because now the party are the "mooks" and point #1 applies.

The steadily-ramping-up progression of encounters, designed to drain resources, just isn't something the D&D system does well or even does at all. Resources are never actually drained, and even a full-power party is simply not meant to take on above-CR encounters with numerous above-CR monsters. It's not breaking D&D, or "HEROing D&D" (as you said a few pages ago) to use a spell that's in the core rulebook, or use classes like the Rogue that are in the core rulebooks that don't have per-day limits you can chip away at. This idea became so nonsensical that future splatbooks even included stuff that would let you take a full rest in 1 or 2 hours instead of 8. By the way -- a Cleric's "full rest" was only ever 1 hour long, meaning to do any kind of draining at all you'd need to make all the adventures happen with no more than an hour in-between.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy

So GMs take a flawed premise, that CR-equivalent encounters burn exactly 1/4 of party resources, multiply that out and try to max out every adventure cycle , assuming everyone in the party is the same level and every encounter is set precisely at that CR, and then there are introduced character classes that don't diminish progressively with each additional encounter bringing people to the conclusion that the forced, befuddled "4-encounter workday" that was not the intended use of the rules structure in the first place should be abandoned. I get that you had lots of company in this misinterpretation and misuse, but if you crap on the scale the balance shifts.

 

More than STUN and SPD and END and PD and DCV, I think this kind of thinking is why I prefer HERO to non-HERO for fantasy.

I honestly don't have any idea what you're even talking about anymore. I was just talking about how the attrition model through the 4-encounter workday (or however many encounters beyond that you want to even use) neither worked or made any sense and now...you're agreeing with me? Alright then.