Panpiper

Hey there. Sorry for the late response. The Hero game I 'was' in just ended yesterday and I am only now checking the forum to see whether there might be something else happening with room. I'm not quite sure how you mean to implement 300 point superhero rules for fantasy. I presume you have some sort of guidance document. I am very familiar with Hero though and am sure I can adapt to whatever it is you intend. You can find a sampling of my character build style here on the forums. I've been playing Hero pretty much since the first publication box set back in the 80's. There is little I have not done in Hero. Fantasy is my preferred genre however, so I am especially interested in seeing what you have in mind. I am retired and so am available most days and times. I live in Montreal, Canada on Eastern Standard Time.

No one apparently has yet mentioned a Potion of Haste. +1 Speed, +4 meters of running and +2 meters of swimming.

The key word in my OP was "aspires" to a Legolas like competency. My problem is that I can easily build a starting character nearly that powerful without any sort of cheese whatsoever. Some strength to wield a decent bow, a few ranged martial arts maneuvers, a few combat levels with said maneuvers, several penalty skill levels for range modifiers and eight penalty skill levels for called shots. That leaves plenty still for characteristics and skills. My question is just how close to Legolas would most GMs be comfortable with for a character in a Fantasy game? I suppose Christopher's "It Depends" answer is an answer of sorts. I've got two GMs both wanting to run Fantasy Hero who are both very new to Hero, and "I" don't know what to tell them. They don't understand the power level effects of things to make a judgement on their own.

Say I as a player have a wood elf archer who aspires to a Legolas like competency with bows. Legolas is able to nail headshots at extreme distances. How as a GM would you handle this? Would you permit high levels of reduced range penalties? Would you permit levels with called shots, and if so, would you allow eight of them? How would you feel about the character adding damage to their arrows from ranged martial arts maneuvers? It is a pretty trivial matter for me to build a character, for a fairly reasonable expenditure of character points, who can nail a headshot at long distance for 3d6RKA. How much is too much?

I guess there is still room for improvement in a seventh edition. Because that is pretty clearly a "bad rule".

I want to create an effect that adds exactly 5 points to a stat, say strength. To do that I select standard effect. If I select for levels one die, it will give me a standard effect of 3. If I select two die, it will give me a standard of effect of 6. However I want five. So I reduce the die to just one and hit +1/2 die, expecting that to give me a standard effect of 5. It does not, it gives me a standard effect of 4. Selecting +1 'also' gives me a standard effect of 4.

Exactly like those, thank you!

Tracking turn order and who goes when is a fairly simple matter for those experienced with the game. Write down all the player characters and opponents in a column on the left hand of a sheet in order of dexterity. Make twelve columns to the right of them and label them segments one through twelve. For each character put a mark in their row corresponding to their speed in the speed chart. All fine and good, except perhaps for needing a ruler to make nice neat columns. This is only slightly tedious. In the old days when I used to run games, I would have a small stack of printed sheets already set up with those rows and columns for making such turn charts. Now however I have a newbie (to Hero) GM who is floundering trying to figure out how to handle initiative and turn order. His life would be made VASTLY simpler if I could point him to a premade sheet he could print out and fill in by hand. I have looked all through the downloads section however and not found anything that even resembles what was endemic in my old days, such a sheet. Does anyone have anything printable they could share?

The real world ratio of silver to gold mined is roughly 1/16. It would make sense to have a similar ratio in terms of coin valuation, but that assumes identical weights of coin. If gold pieces were about 60% of the weight of a silver coin, the value of the coins would be ten silver to one gold. Identical to what the Fantasy Hero book postulates, so no stretch of imagination there for me. The only stretch for me is just how low value all that precious metal seems to be relative to what it is buying. If I were to change anything, I would substitute coppers for what is now priced with silver (which would be relatively large coins) with the lower valuation 'change' being pennies which are a tenth of the weight of full coppers. That would make it more realistic and put gold into the realm of truly rare.

If I am building a character for a Fantasy game, and the magic system imposes a strong probably of failure if my mage tries to do as much damage as my fighter or archer build could do without risk of failure (other than hit probability), then I am NOT building a mage. Done deal. Yes, there are loads of utility spells one could have a mage around for, but I am not interested in playing the jack-knife support character. I want to be able to shine when push comes to shove. Now it may well be thematically appropriate for your campaign setting that magic is NOT particularly useful in a combat situation. Gandalf did use a sword. But it is germane only to a rather small subset of fantasy RPG settings I think. The VAST majority of people playing such games (usually using other systems) have mages either at the top of the damage dealing spectrum, or on par with other character archetypes.

I played in such a campaign some years back. The characters 'started' at 600 points. (!!!) The campaign lasted five years running weekly, and ended when we resolved the main quest that involved literally saving the universe. We had a technologically ignorant Tarzan, a super Vampire, a Sorceress, and my character, essentially a melee tank who was an Immortal, like literally. He resurrected once from a nuke. It was more than a little freeform, and wildly fantastic. We could hop dimensions, we dealt with godlike entities both malevolent and benign, we vanquished Godzilla like threats, confronted armies and demon hordes. That campaign remains my favorite campaign of any I have ever played. The GM too told us that ours was the only campaign he had ever run in over thirty years that had ever successfully run it's course by completing its ultimate quest. My (starting) character in that game, Vestige. https://www.mediafire.com/file/fr1y4w14hd7k0gh/vestige.hdc/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/lstc7tmc59aiclh/Vestige.pdf/file We are now playing D&D.

I don't recall what the 'official' limits were in the 600 point campaign I played in were, but for the most part even after five years we were still roughly in the 60-100 active point range for the most part. The 5th Ed character I played in that: https://www.mediafire.com/file/fr1y4w14hd7k0gh/vestige.hdc/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/lstc7tmc59aiclh/Vestige.pdf/file

Within the last decade I played in a weekly campaign that lasted five years, with 'starting' characters built on 600 points! We had an absolutely wonderful time. I have never had a problem coming up with challenges regardless of point levels. As a player, I too very much appreciate the opportunity to grow and evolve my characters. That is half the fun of the game in my opinion. Sadly this ambition is all too frequently stymied by the fact that GMs are often notoriously stingy with experience, many awarding all of a single XP for a session. This as often as not in a game played every two weeks with a likely lifespan of six months. WTF? The five year campaign mentioned averaged two experience per game, and the growing range of ability was never an issue. At one point the regular GM suffered a personal tragedy and needed time off from running the game. I took over for a year, but continued a 'version' of the existing game in which the characters found themselves whisked into a different universe, summoned there by an ultra-powerful mage. The summoning was cast just as that mage got hit with a stasis field, and while the summoning worked, it also only came through partially. All the players came in as 0 point children, in the middle of a battlefield. They had to survive and get out, with effectively no power. 'HOWEVER', at the end of that session and every session thereafter, they got SIX experience because they were fast recovering their power. Everyone REALLY enjoyed the rapid evolution of their characters.

I've spread the word a bit to some Hero GMs I know who use Roll20 and have a pro account. Hopefully one or more of them will nibble. A Hero Designer export function for a Roll20 character sheet would be a HUGE boon, even if it isn't perfect, as it could always be tweaked manually.

Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making. Old Irish. https://www.evertype.com/misc/charm.html