Fitz

Re: Dream Park HERO! Roleplaying GMing/running LARPing? That sounds like the sort of thing that opens a rift in the time-space continuum and sucks one into an alternate universe. I'm not saying it's not a good idea; just be careful, that's all.

Re: If I can do it with "Jumping" . . . I'd say that it could only be done with an ability which can be used as a zero-phase action. The example you give is good conceptually, but I think as a GM I'd want you to build that ability specifically -- maybe with a Triggered Desolidification or something.

Re: Making Hitting Calcs Easier If you make it DCV + 10, and the target number equal to or above, then you get exactly the same results but it's easier to interpret -- all you have to do is roll your dice, add your OCV, and drop 10 to get the DCV you've hit. For example, if your total is 21, you hit DCV 11. If it's 15, you hit DCV 5, and so on. By the way, if you do a search of the boards you'll find that all of this has been extensively discussed before; it might be worth your while reading through it all.

Re: Reasonable Construction Times Strictly speaking, any time from about Charlemagne's time is Early Medieval. The term "Dark Ages" is deprecated these days, and the period it could reasonably be applied to is shrinking all the time as we learn more about it. After the withdrawal of Rome, it's highly unlikely that any European ruler would be supplying a whole army with swords -- they're just too expensive and labour-intensive to manufacture. Spears, maybe long knives like the scramasax, would be the weapons issued to the grunts, with swords being reserved for the elite troops (or those who inherited their great-grandaddy's sword, or picked one up off a corpse -- for most of the Medieval period there were more "inherited" swords in use than new ones). One of the major perks of being the winner of a battle was that you got to keep all the expensive weapons and armour from the corpses of the losers, while losing a battle could be disastrous not only for the warriors lost, but for the equipment that would have to be replaced. Note: the Swabians were famous for using huge two-handed swords in the 9th to 11th centuries, so you could include them in the list of potential weapons if you liked. As far as I know, they were just up-sized versions of the standard European straight broadsword, unlike the the specialist zweihanders of the late medieval/renaissance period

Re: Fantasy Campaign Ideas I've always fancied doing a campaign based on Zelazny's Lord of Light in which all the PCs, using a combination of natural (psionic?) talent and augmentation technology, pose as avatars of the Hindu gods. For those who haven't read the book (and I recommend that you do), the protagonists are the crew, or descendents of the crew of a generation ship which has created a colony on an alien planet. I forget the exact rationale as to why they started posing as gods, but now it's entrenched and the main population are kept purposefully ignorant -- the hero, Sam (the Buddha-oid), and his friends and confederates are rebels against the status quo and are attempting to force their fellow "gods" to let the population advance socially and technologically.

Re: Ultimate Grimoire Letter B Spells If you like, I have web space free where the files could be hosted.

Re: Character Sheets I print them from HD exports, usually html, before each session if the character has changed -- I've developed a bunch of html export filters that suit me very well. My printer has a double-siding "print as folded booklet" feature which is great; it shrinks everything down so that four pages of info will fit on two sides of a single sheet which saves paper, ink and table space.

Re: Advice on map detail My usual practise these days is to draw a very general map showing only the various quarters (if applicable) and the location of any essential locations, such as important temples and the like. Only if it's actually needed for play will I render anything in more detail than that, and most of the time it's not. One thing I've found quite useful is to keep a bunch of city geomorphs* handy for mapping out things like chases and what-not when there's no time to draw an exact layout. If need be, later on you can re-render the geomorphs and individualise the area for later play. *Geomorphs: tiles which match along the edges so that they can be randomly selected and laid out to form a seamless map. I prefer hexes, but squares are easier to create and probably do just as good a job, though of course the total number of possible combinations is smaller for squares than for hexes.

Re: Combat Luck variant OK, but I thought that the bit where I mentioned treating them exactly like damage dice made my meaning clear -- my mistake. To clarify, what I meant was this: BODY shown on the (Combat Luck) dice cancels an equal amount of BODY inflicted by the attack The total showing on the dice cancels the same quantity of STUN inflicted by the attack If any positive "anti-KB" is rolled, it cancels a like amount of KB from the attack Is that clearer?

Re: Combat Luck variant

I've been toying with this for a long time now -- five minutes, easy. My thought is to use Combat Luck like anti-damage dice; rather than buying what amounts to invisible armour, one would buy Combat Luck dice which subtract from the damage inflicted by an attack. Effectively, I guess what I'm talking about is a sort of variable Damage Resistance combined with variable Knockback Resistance. That is, if you have any dice of Combat Luck, you'd roll them and count the BODY as if for a normal attack, subtracting 2 from the damage taken for each six showing, 0 for each 1, and one point each for 2-5. The total showing is subtracted from the STUN inflicted. You'd also roll for KB as usual, with the result subtracting from any KB done by the original attack. As far as pricing goes, I haven't really thought that far but I'd say about 3pts per d6 might be in the ball park.

Re: Coming from D&D-question about power level of starting hero D&D is a fantasy setting. The strictures and mechanics of D&D pretty much ensure that no matter what setting you set out to try to emulate, what you end up playing is "D&D World". Not that that's neccessarily a bad thing; there's a lot about D&D that I really enjoy. There's a lot that frustrates the hell out of me too, but that's why I prefer Fantasy Hero -- so that I can emulate the things I like about D&D and dump the stuff I hate.

Re: Racial Disadvantages I'd agree with what Dust Raven said -- if you want vaguely balanced starting characters, then you have one of two options: either to make racial disads count towards the normal campaign disads limit, or to apply them as zero-point disads and allow the player to select other disads up to the campaign limit. In either case, any race-specific powers or abilities should have to be paid for out of the character's starting points. As long as the campaign rules are clear before the players start creating their characters, then they don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to bitching and moaning time.

Re: Everybody Must Get Stoned A Major Transform is supposed to have defined an identifiable means of reversing the effect, if I recall correctly, and if the target is a character they can "heal" the Transform effect at the same rate as normal BODY healing. There's no reason why you couldn't define the reversal means as "X amount of time passes". As far as your magician is concerned, I would think that it would also require LS:Longevity as well, to be in effect as long as the Transform is active.

Re: Robbers on the Road

Re: D & D Diatribe I have a love/hate relationship with AD&D and D&D -- I love playing D&D, I just hate D&D. If you follow me. I really like playing in a high fantasy milieu, mainly because of the very odd things that happen as a matter of course. I really loved AD&D, which was my introduction to the world of roleplaying, but became increasingly frustrated with the straitjacket the system imposed on character development. I started using Champions for fantasy gaming back in the olden days when it was a flimsy 64-page paperback, and stuck with it (through 4th Ed.) until D&D3e was released. I got all enthusiastic about D&D3e because it seemed to pretty much keep the old AD&D feel while allowing for more freedom of development. However, after a year or so of playing with it, I came to realise that the straitjacket had just been let out a bit in the gussets, and though a more comfortable fit than in the old days, it still wasn't what I really wanted. And so back to Hero. If only I had someone other than myself who was willing to GM Fantasy Hero, but those are the breaks.

Re: Robbers on the Road Are you talking historically here, or just about robbers in your own campaign? I'm conveniently in the middle of rereading The Big Book of Thugs which is a goldmine for thug-related factoids, and a common thread seems to be that gangs don't last long without a charismatic and/or smart boss, and don't last long in the face of competent and/or organised opposition In other words, their best prey are the common hoi-polloi who aren't capable of defending themselves agoinst the thugs' own limited fighting skills and ruthlessness, and even then the tactics used tended towards backstabbing and ambush. A normal party of adventurers should be able to kick the crap out of them without raising a sweat unless they're well outnumbered.

Re: An EB by any other name... My votes would go to: Energy Blast ==> Ranged Attack Entangle ==> Restrain Paramedic ==> First Aid I've never really had any problem with confusing STUN and Stunning, though I've noticed that others have. Maybe a terminology change might help, but I suspect it would be more trouble than it's worth.

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO? Well, for my part my immediate interpretion was that it was an html markup error, not shouting

Re: Sayings Old Sussex folk saying: "A farting horse will never tire, a farting man's the man to hire"

Re: If AVLD, why not DVLA? "Incomplete" is not the same thing as "broken". If Hero purports to be a truly generic rpg system, then it needs to be able to elegantly reflect any character construction. Invulnerability to a certain attack form is common enough in comics and fantasy literature to be worth allowing for in a generic rpg system, and the "Nigh Invulnerable" (cf. The Tick) of 75% Damage Reduction just isn't the same as "Actually Invulnerable". I respect your desire to avoid having absolute immunities in your own campaigns, but just because you don't like the idea doesn't mean that it's not valid.

Re: If AVLD, why not DVLA?

Re: If AVLD, why not DVLA? That's a good point, though it falls down with reference to Damage Reduction, since in that case you're paying a fixed price for a relative decrease in the damage you take.

I've been doing some monster conversions from AD&D/D&D3e, and one of the clunkiest power constructions I'm forced into revolve around those critters that are immune to something - whether it be fire, swords, magic, or whatever. My options seem to be either to go with Desolid (only vs. blah) which I don't like conceptually and because you then have to fudge things like knockback and pay a lot more for all the critter's own attack powers, or to buy masses of Armour (only vs. blah) plus masses of Resistant Damage reduction (also only vs. blah) separately vs PD and ED. The attack power modifiers NND and AVLD are perfectly good for building attacks that are irresistable except in certain circumstances, but there's no equivalent modifier for defences. I find this odd, since before the dawn of time (Hero System-wise) there's been a principle stated that for any attack there is a (cheaper) defence. Why not turn the attack modifiers around and have similiar mods that can be applied to defences?

Re: Balancing Magic In our own (human) history, magic has been omnipresent until very recently. Just think of all the charms and rituals people used to make the crops grow, to get babies born without killing the mother, to gain the goodwill of the house-elves (or to get them to leave us alone), or to make the metal in the forge bright and true. It's not the hocus-pocus magic of bearded men in pointy hats, but it's magic nonetheless. Take a look at a barn next time you're in the country -- the horseshoe nailed up over the door is a magic charm. So is the corn dolly, the figurine made of corn straw at harvest time. It's all over the place. Re: Gaming I tried to create the separation between the "professional" wizard and the bloke-on-the-street-with-a-few-charms in my game by enforcing minimum and maximum character points for each respective type devoted to magic stuff, in the hope that I'd get puny wizards with few other skills, and buff warriors and sneaky thieves with a charm or two. It didn't turn out that way in practice though; I got puny wizards alright, but nobody else "wasted" any of their character points on magic at all. Hey ho.