Panpiper

Re: Love for Non-Casters? Coming back late to this conversation, but here is me having fun with it: Technically this requires a GM's permission because one is not supposed to put Naked Advantages into a power framework without GM permission. Naked Advantage Multipower for a Warriors Weapon: (6th Ed.) 15 "Perfect Warrior" 30 AP Naked Advantage on 60 AP of Killing Attack; -1 OAF (Weapon of Specialization) 1 "Perfect Focus" +½ Armor Piercing, 0 Endurance on Advantage - End cost: Normal Str 1 "Perfect Form" +½ Area Of Effect: 4m Radius, Selective Target - End cost: Str+3 1 "Perfect Followup" +½ Autofire; 3 shots, Half Endurance - End cost: ((Str+1)*3)/2 1 "Perfect Chi" +½ Affects Desolid - End cost: Str+3 This is ideally suited for a warrior with a lifetime's pursuit of perfection with their martial art. Obviously for the character conception to make sense, taking at least the minimum of martial art maneuvers would be virtually obligatory for the character, as would be defining a weapon element and specialization. Er... Heh. That's the LAST thing any GM needs around me is yet 'more' ways for me to increase raw damage with my warrior characters, right KS? Weapon Master allows a GM to allow a warrior character to buy whatever level of raw damage dealing on a normal weapon that the GM is comfortable with.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Ah, but that is the amazing thing about Killer Shrike. He would not ban your rod or pet, just like he would actually let me play "The Beast". What he would do instead is to simply and casually teach us the error of our ways and make us wish we had less one sided characters. Would that all GMs were as talented.

Re: 'Heroic' Toughness ability, how to balance... I am 'officially' renaming this ability to 'Heroic' Toughness. I expressly want for players to be able to buy this ability with XP and not just at character creation. If it is 'natural' it might be reasonable to expect they were born with it and so would find it hard to justify buying it up later. If it is 'heroic' it makes sense that the ability might grow with the increasing 'heroism' of the character. Hence: Heroic Toughness 3 2PD/2ED resistant (Only stops half the body of an attack, up to 2 body. -1/2), (Only stops as much stun as it stops body -1/2) "Heroic Toughness" - May be purchased in multiple increments. Heroic Toughness only has an effect when the body done by an attack exceeds the resistant defense of any armor that may be worn. (Even if no armor is worn, Heroic Toughness has effect.) Half of whatever body damage that penetrated any regular resistant armor is reduced by Heroic Toughness, up to the limit of the PD/ED of the Heroic Toughness. The same amount of Stun is also stopped as was stopped by the Heroic Toughness, in addition to the stun stopped by the regular armor and non-resistant PD/ED of the character.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Ah, don't you just hate these GMs that require flexibility, teamwork, actual 'tactics'! Gheesh!

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Heh. It looks like our posts crossed one another in the aether and anticipated what we would each say.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Were I actually playing in your game KS, I would not play this character. I prefer a somewhat more well rounded character, a little less one sided. I prefer stats that make sense and a 23 strength married to a 'mere' 13 Con, Body & Presence does not make 'sense' to me. I like having a few skills appropriate to a character so they are 'not' just a tag-along outside of combat. And finally I would have three point levels on the martial art and carry a backup weapon, not two point levels on a single weapon. And XP would go for beefing up not so much the combat power, but rather resilience in the face of magic. And yes, there are ways to deal with the one sided incarnation of this character. First and foremost, try to get that battle flail out of his hands with a grab, disarm whatever. And he is vulnerable to all sorts of magic, so whatever mages are around should recognize him for the threat he is and cut loose. And his low presence for the kind of character his is, is a weakness that could also be exploited.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Oh Mayapuppies, don't 'YOU' tell me these characters are fair and balanced! Yes, with a coordinated attack by a group of characters attacking with the element of surprise, this character could be taken down. But no GM should have to be in a position where 'that' is the only option for dealing with a single player's character. And as an opponent, the players would have no idea that that was how they needed to deal with this 'Beast', not until they had met him. And then it would be too late, as this character will one shot knockout/kill virtually anything.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Retraction and apology: I apologize Killer Shrike. I sat down just for the fun of it and created a character for 'your' kind of game. In my defense, I had when I made my original boast, assumed a 150 point 5th Edition character, but I realized afterwards that the campaign guidelines on your web site start characters off at 125 points. The 'combat monster' character I create with that (pulling no punches, but without recourse to cheesy limitations, just straight from the book and a couple of 'Heroic Knacks' from your site) likely would not be able to singlehandedly deal with a horde of goblins 'and' take out a war troll. This character only hits for 3 1/2 D6 habitually, and while adequately protected from physical threats, would likely be as vulnerable to non 'killing attack' magic as anyone else. The stratospheric damage potential referred to in my original post would require a slightly higher point character. (And this is a seriously one sided, combat only, character.)

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality For the record I intend to use Killer Shrike's Arms & Armament Variant in my game, even though his higher end weapons wind up being a damage class or two higher than what I was used to back when. As his weapons chart does a truly excellent job of differentiating the various weapons and giving them all very clear advantages and disadvantages. While under the standard system, there is little reason to not buy as many 2 point +1 OCV levels as one can get away with for their favorite weapon, with Killer Shrike's list you may well be better off being more flexible and carrying two or three weapons for different situations. His list makes for a more interesting and tactical game. Unfortunately Brunt is too dumb to use anything other than a club. ;-)

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality I do not know how the rules today would treat something like that. But 'back in my day' 7 body would be an impairing wound that would take a standard 'thug' out of the fight. The bleeding rules we used stipulated that an impairing wound would be bleeding (though at a slower rate than negative body) and the character would die without medical attention. 7 body to the head or vitals would translate to 14 body and would be an instant kill (full body in one hit). All this assumes no armor of course. Wearing chainmail (plate was rare in our games), such 2D6 attacks were survivable most of the time, but a few such strikes would fell an opponent, often through stun loss. Also, a 'greataxe' in our game would have been be a 2D6+1 weapon. Nitpicky I suppose. ;-)

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Ok, true enough that if you are completely new to the system, my advice is better than none. ;-)

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality I shall have to invest in Hero Designer. I had figured if I was going to be a player, it was unnecessary. But for a GM it is obviously well nigh essential. And were it not for a continent separating us, I would be beating down your door for a place at your table. ;-)

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Ah KillerShrike, I would dearly 'love' to play in a game such as yours, where one can truly cut loose with their min/max skills and spend XP to awesome effect. ;-) Any encounter would get one's blood racing as one was put to the test to see if they had made a critical error, tactical decisions being all the more critical, because there would be little room for error. That would be an exciting and memorable game. But the prospect of 'GMing' such a game fills me with dread. Player characters built the way I know I can build them would literally cleave through armies of the regular soldiers I've postulated. They really could depose kings. The only way to avoid that would be to make a regular grunt 'way' stronger then the normal characteristic maxima would suggest they aught be. Already giving them all an average strength of 13 is kind of pushing that. (Or not, in a muscle powered weapon society, it makes sense that soldiers wielding that muscle powered weaponry would beef up from the norm.) That or have a plentiful supply of elite bodyguards on the same level as the players (which too is not that much of a stretch). To challenge such characters, one would need war trolls, not goblin raiders. So that's the quandary. I want to be able to define a world in which a relatively normal soldier makes sense, that is at the same time more than a match for a single goblin. And yet I want to be able to have the player characters be surrounded by goblins and make that actually be scary to them. And when I tell them that the door is being smashed in by a war troll 'while they are so surrounded', I want them to fear. Trope Irongrip, Deathdealer, built for 'your' game, would in my world all by himself leave all those goblins in a heap with the war troll as a cherry. ;-) (And that would neatly describe the paintings his concept is derived from, would it not?)

Re: Sky Scorcher 1 megaton air-to-air missile (1956) Those bombers would have been intercepted over the high arctic or tundra. There were no human beings or settled lands beneath where the warhead would have detonated. Secondly, everyone seems to universally overestimate the lethality of these weapons. A one megaton blast happening at a height of six or seven miles would not turn the area below into a radioactive wasteland. You certainly wouldn't want to be beneath it when it went off, but it's effect on the ground would have been transitory. Yes, there would however be a good chance the Soviets would be trying to fly in under the radar (hugging the ground, which would slow them down, giving their opponents more time to find them and intercept, so six of one, half a dozen of the other), so... What was their alternative? Those bombers if it came down to a shooting war, HAD to be stopped. Allowing even one to get through would be unthinkable. And the technology for making reliably targetable air to air missiles simply was not there yet. Giving them a nuclear warhead, made it very likely that an interceptor 'could' bring down whatever bomber they detected. "That's" what they were thinking.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality

Re: Peter's 'House Rules' for Fantasy Hero - Version 1 A further evolution, possibly necessitating changes to the above. Campaign flavor and tropes: The game will be rather Tolkienesque with the classic races (looks like I may be helping to flesh out Tolkeinica, KS). Elves are ancient, aloof and powerful, Orcs are numerous, barbaric and cruel, Halflings are small, isolationist and non-combative, etc.. This is NOT Middle Earth, but the world will appear similar to Peter Jackson's vision. The history of the world is ancient, long dead and forgotten civilizations lay buried, magnificent ruins are overgrown by ancient forests. And ancient evils still sometimes prowl the dark recesses of those ruins. Dungeon crawls would well happen if players get too curious. Magic will NOT be the typical D&D thermonuclear arms race. Magic will be relatively rare and mostly out of combat. Most magic users need extra time on their magic that makes it impractical for combat. (EG: Sauron, the most powerful mage in the world, used a mace in melee! Gandalf a sword and staff.) Evil magic using master villains will usually have henchmen followers and/or summoned creatures and the like to keep the heroes away while they complete their dastardly rituals. A magic using player should attempt to simulate something similar. Their most powerful magics aught to be divinatory and the like. Magic could gently assist the warriors, it must never supplant them. Magic Items are equally rare. One will occasionally find a low powered magic item, but the rarity of them will make even low powered items very valuable. Higher powered magic items are so rare that they are likely to only be found in the possession of princes destined to become kings, or heroes single handedly trying to save the world with the full support of the greatest mages in the land. In-combat healing should be of small effect (assuming there is 'any' at all), just enough maybe to stop a mortally wounded character from dying. Routinely eliminating combat damage as it is inflicted simply would not occur. After combat healing should speed up healing, not instantly eliminate damage (regenerate effects). An actual healer character capable of such speeding up of healing, would be a rarity in the world and would be incessantly deluged with every sickly or injured character in the area were they known, players be warned. The nature of the adventure in the game will at first be episodic as the heroes are developing and perhaps making a name for themselves (and their GM regains a feel for the game). Later, grander schemes and adventures may reveal themselves. At first the player characters will be relative unknowns in the area they find themselves in. The starting power level of the players however is significantly above that of the typical soldier/bandit, they 'are' hero material. Players do not start the game wealthy (unless they bought a wealth perk) but neither are they impoverished. Characters will start the game with the equipment appropriate to their characters. If a warrior is defined as wearing armor and carrying a big sword, he will start with that and enough pocket money to eat for a few months. There will be plenty of opportunity to top off that cash before it runs out. Players can assume they have a riding horse if they bought riding skill. A character defined as a mounted knight would start with a horse that won't run away in combat, but unless it has been bought as a follower, it won't 'help' in combat either and could easily be killed out from under the knight. A player who has a long itemized list of all the gear they have, as long as it is something a well organized adventurer 'might' have and would not normally cost a fortune, can be assumed to actually have all of that and a pack mule to carry it all. As the GM, I don't want to become the general goods store with a huge list of the various sorts of threads and needles players can buy, hence my intent to let players simply start with whatever list they desire as long as it is reasonable. Once the game starts, there will be a small effort to track large expenses. The standard unit of currency would be a silver coin roughly the size of a dime, which we will call, a 'Dime'. Silver Quarters are equal to two and a half dimes and Silver Ducats are ten dimes. I'm not calling Ducats 'dollars', because that will give people entirely the wrong impression of their value. In this world a single silver dime represents a day's wages for a typical laborer, two dimes, a skilled tradesman. A dime will buy you a meal, a few drinks, and lodging in the common room of an inn, and return change (three meals, drinks, and a lockable private room is two dimes, no change). Smaller denominations than dimes are in copper, and in fact most incidental transactions would use coppers. Ten pennies make up a dime. Pennies are quite a bit larger than dimes and the ten bits that make up a penny are slightly smaller. For the most part, we would not concern ourselves with such 'bits' in the game. Gold coins do exist, but they are rare and will get you noticed. A one once gold coin is worth a thousand silver dimes, or one hundred Ducats. Players start with one hundred dimes, plus whatever reasonable character appropriate equipment they list prior to the game starting. For power level comparison, a typical decently trained and equipped human soldier in this world would wear scale or chainmail armor (def 5-6), carry a shield and hit for 1 1/2D6, with an OCV/DCV of 6/6 after including levels and shield bonuses. Common brigands would be less than this. The higher the players range from this average, the more opponents they likely will face. Armor better than chainmail is rare and expensive. Magical defenses that might stack with armor are vastly rarer still and even more expensive. Combat luck and magical defenses that do 'not' stack with armor are somewhat more known, but not common. All bets are off however when encountering balrogs in deep dank dungeons.

Re: Esoterica I've really got to hand it to you two, Esoterica looks to be loads of fun as an adventuring locale. And even if one is expecting to never play there, it's loads of fun to read, just for the heck of it. Thank you for all your efforts.

Re: A Question of Balance & Lethality Hello TSandman. Heh. Yes, I am indeed "The" Peter that was working at Le Valet d'Coeur years ago. (For anyone else reading, that was 'the' game store for Montreal for the ten years I worked there as manager and buyer, and I sold a lot of Hero.) I don't know how helpful my own guidelines will be for you as I am largely stumbling through that dark myself. Fifteen years ago, all this would have been a snap to me, but time and changes to the game have eroded my old skill with the system. I wrote those out as a necessary part of figuring things out, and posted them hoping to get feedback from people who know the game better than I. Let me know if you want more meat at the table. I am GMing with one group right now but would welcome the chance to 'not' GM with another. ;-) (Oh, and by the way, if your French is halfway decent, there likely is room in that other group for you if you want, Saturday afternoons.)

I've been away from tabletop gaming and therefor Hero System for the last fifteen years. Recently I caught the bug again and scoured my city for players and have scraped together less than a mere handful. My intent was to join a game as a player with an experienced GM. However the folks I've assembled are none of them in a position where they are prepared to run a game themselves, and so I find myself, the GM. And I find myself in a bit of a wicket. When I left gaming fifteen years ago, the Fantasy Hero games we played considered a 2D6 HKA to be a decently powerful attack, 2D6+1 was 'really' good and 3D6 was virtually unknown. No resistant defenses stacked, and so full plate represented the pinnacle of protection. Our games were also typically virtually devoid of magic items. This is the sort of game I remember, this is how my mind thinks about the mechanics, balancing towards this power level. I come back having skipped a couple of editions in the rules and I find that the game has changed massively. I see now that a starting fantasy character can easily muster a 6D6 HKA and 17 resistant defense (plus PD/ED), and this is without exceeding suggested guidelines by KillerShrike, whom I respect immensely. 6D6 HKA exceeds the power limit of our old 'superhero' games by 2D6! The game now seems to be one of herculean attacks to pierce gargantuan defenses to reach a tiny squishy center, such that one decent damage roll can one hit kill a typical character. Am I wrong in this perception? Have I simply failed to grok how it all fits together to balance itself out? Am I making a huge error in wanting to eliminate Deadly Blow, extra DC levels in martial arts and restrict combat levels? Am I simply opening myself up to all sorts of end runs around a limitation on Combat Luck, that it only works if no other resistant armor is worn? I am no longer sufficiently intuitive with the rules, and certainly not familiar enough with the current rules, to be able to predict and accommodate the consequences of trying to reduce the lethality of the game. Have you, the intelligentsia of Fantasy Hero, any advice for me? See Peter's 'House Rules' for Fantasy Hero - Version 1 for what I've given my players.

Re: Lucky Damage Dice Right now I am GMing a game. But I try to think like a player when creating game content and what I would most enjoy when playing. As a GM, I want to try to restrain power growth somewhat to make my life easier and so the players do not too quickly arrive at the point where they can simply slay the 'army' and depose the evil king. However as a player I derive great enjoyment growing the combat power of my character, even as I know this is typically not what the GM wants. So as a GM I like the idea of having things players can buy that 'do' increase their combat power, but that does it in a way that does not too quickly invalidate the work I've already done. So having these Lucky Dice' available for five points a pop gives players something cool they can buy. If I let them have it for free, they cannot then 'buy' something cool. The idea is not just to get player's combat power more consistently in their upper range, but to let them do that as a means of real but balanced growth in their power level.

Re: Urban fantasy – Cthulhu Mythos investigator 8 STR -2 14 DEX 12 8 CON -4 10 BODY 18 INT 8 21 EGO 22 20 PRE 10 6 COM -2 2 PD 2 ED 2 SPD 4 REC I found it very hard to read the characteristics you posted. It was largely just a string of virtually undecipherable numbers. I would recommend when posting stats, that the quantity of information be kept to the absolute minimum. Virtually everyone here knows what the base values are, and what the statistics skill rolls will be, etc.. You don't need to include all of that, 'especially' all on a single line. And if each stat is on it's own line, like I reformated yours above, it is a LOT easier to read. The point balance is largely irrelevant as this is an NPC designed to be essentially a plot device for the players. As such there is nothing wrong with the build of this character. As far as conception goes however, I would have 'huge' questions as to how a 'blind' man is able to wander from place to place, able to avoid capture by both Corruption Cults 'and' apparently the police who believe him to be guilty of murder. Especially having 2D6 of unluck, I find this stretches my credulity way past the breaking point. Again, because he is an NPC, you can spend as many points on him as you need to to make him work for your game. I would recommend turning his hunted into a watched, including that of the police and redefining his background as having maybe beaten the murder rap using a technicality rather than 'proving his innocence' (even though he IS innocent), so he is still regarded with suspicion by the police but they can't touch him. Also, if you want him moving from place to place, make it perhaps so that his amulet gives him some extra sensory perception similar to sight (cannot discern fine details), maybe he can see auras of both people and objects. This would allow him enough 'vision' to actually move from place to place. A 'real' blind man would be virtually housebound, the prospect of a trip even to the train station being one of mortal dread.

Re: Lucky Damage Dice I fear that I have been away from the system for too long to really delve into the nitty gritty of how to build this in a manner completely consistent with regular point balance. I am aware that this is not quite as cost effective as just buying a Deadly Blow (although this can be used for 'all' damage rolls, where even the highest cost Deadly Blow cannot). But to me actual point balance was not the priority in my mind (I know, that's heresy). I guestimated the price point and decided on 5 points per because that was what I was comfortable with as a GM, if a player wanted to boost their damage output this way. I would be very happy so see someone do a better analysis of the 'real' point cost, but that is a bit out of my league until after I spend six months with my nose buried in the rule book, making up for a fifteen year lapse in my gaming history. So I am quite please that you Hierax are looking at it that way.

Standard Heroic 175 Total Points with 50 points of Matching Complications. If using 5th Edition: 150 points with 50 in Complications. (We are using 5th edition for the time being.) (Players may have more complications than this, but they do not 'gain' from them.) MAGIC USING CHARACTERS in most parts of the world are relatively rare. A big city might have a few dozen, most of whom would be rich and would not mingle much with 'commoners'. Using magic in public WILL be noticed and may elicit extreme reactions. Most magic in the world is cast with extra time, concentration, gestures and incantation limitations, and possibly others. Players are not constrained by this and may allow themselves to have fun. 'However', magic should be supportive of fighters, not something that makes them seem redundant. MAGIC ITEMS are extremely rare. It is very unlikely that one will simply find a magic item in some monster's loot. If an item is found, it is likely to be a low powered but useful item. CHARACTER CONCEPTIONS are very flexible, meaning I would prefer to make the world conform to the characters that the players want to play, rather than make the characters conform to the world. Create the character that you would most enjoy playing and that would be the most fun for others to play along side of. NORMAL CHARACTERISTIC MAXIMA are in effect, but skill maxima is not. You can have really high skill rolls if you want (if the GM 'really' needs to catch the thief, he'll have a magic user around with detect spells ;-) ). It is perfectly all right if you want to buy characteristics above the maxima, but they do cost double. GENERAL POWER LEVEL is largely decided by the power level of the players. If all players design combat monsters, expect to meet combat monsters as opponents. If all players design well rounded characters, expect to meet similarly well rounded opponents. If all players create well rounded characters but one player creates a monster, the presence of the monster will make the game quite a bit more dangerous for the other players, so they are advised to get the player with the monster to tone it down a bit. On the other hand, if the players want to play a combat focused game and one player has a wimpy character, they should work with him to beef up the capacity of the character. All that said, character sheets are to be written in pencil and handed to the GM before the game. The GM will then take an eraser to the character sheet and make any and all changes the GM deems necessary. These changes are not to be debated. If you don't want the GM making changes on your character sheet, don't hand the GM a sheet that might require them. ;-) HIT LOCATIONS and ARMOR LOCATIONS are being used, as are encumbrance rules. You may purchase Penalty Skill Levels to compensate for encumbrance penalties. HEALING I am not quite sure yet how to handle. That may depend on what the players have in mind for characters. If someone creates an interesting healer character with a nice approach to healing, I likely would run with that. My normal inclination is to make combat healing very limited and require downtime to properly heal back up, though magic could increase the speed. XP AVERAGES Per Gaming Session: 1 XP for showing up. 1 XP for staying focused on the game 1 XP for helping to make the game fun for everyone (good RP, good humor, staying involved, etc) 1 XP for doing something truly awesome - very rare 1 XP if the GM screws up and makes things WAY harder than they should be and the players triumph anyway. - very rare. + Bonus points sometimes given for specific skills or perks Plus: End of an adventure if the adventure took more than one game session: 1 XP per week since the start of the adventure. 3 points would be the norm for most game sessions where everyone 'stayed in the game'. This permits reasonable though not outlandish character growth. Players may spend their XP immediately. All spending is of course subject to GM approval, but much spending can be assumed to be automatically approved. IE; increasing the 'scope' of a level (making a 3pt level into a 5pt level), increasing a characteristic 1 point, putting 1 point on a skill, KS, etc.. Buying extra Damage Classes, Deadly Blow etc, 'additional' combat levels, is almost certainly subject to GM approval and would usually be done at the end of an adventure, not just between game sessions. For 'mages' buying an additional magic power, it can usually be assumed as long as it is not more powerful than anything else they already have and in keeping with the flavor of the character. Increasing power on existing spells would require approval. Also relevant to XP: EPIPHANY on TO HIT ROLLS (Thank you KillerShrike) The character has a flash of insight regarding the skill or ability that they rolled a three for and their competency with that ability is expanded. The character gains +2 character points to allocate towards a bonus with that skill or attack. For attacks this translates into a +1 OCV Combat Skill Level with that attack. If a skill this translates into either a +1 or +2 with that skill depending on whether the skill is on the 3/2 or 2/1 costing model. If the three was rolled for a familiarity, the familiarity becomes a full skill instead. This can not be used to upgrade existing levels; for example a character could not opt to bump an All Combat level to an Overall Level with the 2 free points gained in this fashion -- the 2 pts must be spent specifically for the task they were gained from. However, levels gained in this fashion can themselves be upgraded later with experience. For example a 2pt +1 OCV level with a specific kind of pistol could be upgraded to a 3pt "Pistols" tight group level later on. CHARACTER'S GM XP POOL Anyone can deposit unspent XP into a GM XP pool for their character. Any time a player puts points into the pool, the GM gives a bonus of 50% to the XP that are being deposited, so if a player is depositing 2 points, 3 points would be put in the pool. After any game session in which 'existing' points in the GM XP pool were 'not' spent, the points in the pool go up by 10% in interest. THE PLAYER CANNOT SPEND THESE POINTS, EVER. Only the GM can spend these points on the character and will do so when the time is right. Typically the points will be allowed to accumulate until there are enough of them for the GM to buy for the character something really cool, in one shot. Normally this will not be a big increase in combat power (unless all the other characters have been massively growing their own power) but rather will reflect a significant new direction for their character's evolvement. (A player depositing a full 3 points per session for six sessions would wind up with ~30 points in their pool, enough for something 'very' nice.) If a different GM takes over before this pool is spent, control passes to that GM. The exception being if it is the GM's character, at which point control remains with the previous GM. GM's HAVE A CHARACTER within the group that is a 'player' character, not a potential enemy NPC. This is so that if and when some other GM takes over to run an adventure, the previous GM already has a character within the group at roughly the same power level. How much the GM involves 'their' character is up to them (somebody has to watch the horses/backpacks/camp), but their character gains the average XP that the group earned, regardless of the involvement of the GM character. This is so the characters can maintain a rough point balance and so that a player is not penalized if they have a good idea for an adventure. DEADLY BLOW is disallowed in this game, except in very special circumstances like backstab abilities or the like (yes Steph, you can take it for backstab). You cannot simply pay straight points to buy Deadly Blow for normal circumstances. However, you can use... LUCKY DAMAGE DICE A character may purchase 'lucky dice' for 5 points per dice. These lucky dice can be used as damage dice any time a character has to roll damage and are especially useful for killing attacks. (This does not add to the number of dice the character may roll, a lucky dice replaces a regular die in the damage roll.) The effect of lucky dice is any time the lucky die rolls a one for damage, the lucky die can be rerolled and the number added to the damage total. If it rolls a one again, it can again be rerolled, etc. Characters can have more than one lucky die. You 'can' buy the basic MARTIAL ARTS maneuvers in order to get better bonuses and damage classes with your character, but you still need to follow the rules for purchasing the minimum number of maneuvers, and if you do not buy a weapon element for your martial art, it is assumed that it 'only' works with your favorite weapon group. Purchasing extra damage classes 'may' get vetoed. COMBAT LUCK can only be purchased if it takes the limitation, cannot be used while wearing armor. However you can use... NATURAL TOUGHNESS 3 2PD/2ED resistant (Only stops half the body of an attack, up to 2 body. -1/2), (Only stops as much stun as it stops body -1/2) Natural toughness (NT) only has an effect when the body done by an attack exceeds the resistant defense of any armor that may be worn. (If no armor is worn, NT still has effect.) Half of the body damage that penetrates the regular resistant armor is reduced by NT, up to the limit of the PD/ED of the NT. The same amount of Stun is also stopped as was stopped by the NT, in addition to the stun stopped by the regular armor and non-resistant PD/ED of the character. Natural Toughness can be purchased in multiple increments. It has the effect of making really deadly blows, a lot less deadly while still keeping it quite easy to stop a character through stun loss. ENDURANCE COSTS only need to normally be tracked by magic users. Fighters can dispense with this record keeping unless it looks like it is going to be a 'long' fight. The GM will warn you if it is going to be a 'long' fight. Buying half endurance cost on strength for a fighter would not necessarily be a waste of points, but it would be used rarely. This does mean however that there is no 'Pushing' in the game. I am starting to get involved with the http://www.killershrike.com web site and will be drawing heavily from there for inspiration. The world will largely be the 'Generica' world on that site http://www.killershrike.info/. If there is something you find on that web site that you want to use with your character, it is probably going to be fine. I am not a stickler for people having a gazillion knowledge skills, professional skill, etc. But if it is relevant to your character, do buy it. I will go out of my way to make it worth your while to have at least a little bit of color in your character. CHARACTER BACKGROUNDS You can earn a bonus of 3 XP for your character right at the start of play if you write a one page background story/description of your character (it can be longer, but you don't get more XP). Include details that describe especially what motivates your character. Please print a copy for everyone. (If you start the game with a background written, you can use that 3 XP in your initial character creation.)

Re: Lucky Damage Dice