Fitz

I make spells cost LTE -- sort of. I tried to think how that could be done other than just waving my god-like GM Hand o' Power, and decided that giving spells a mandatory Side Effect -- an END Drain with delayed return rate -- works well to return the desired effect. It has the advantage that it can be tweaked for individual spells, so the amount of END Drained will depend on whether the Side Effect is defined as Minor, Major or Extreme. I use a Major efect (30pts or 1/2 Active) as the default. This has another advantage for my purposes; it means that only casting the spell costs LTE, while maintaining an already-cast spell can use normal END. This reflects my ideas about how I want magic to work pretty well, since in my campaign it's the evocation of the magical forces which are so draining on the spellcaster, not just the use of those forces.

Memory-form projectiles -- very nasty. Produced in a helical format and then deformed to a straight needle; when introduced into a warm wet medium (like a human body, for example) they revert to their helical form, wrapping themselves around bones and arterys. Just the thing to make a combat surgeon's life a misery. Of course, they make the victim's life a misery too, but then being shot will do that anyway.

Leave little treats out for them, and gradually, over time, leave the treats closer and closer to yourself. Sit quietly and don't make any sudden moves or noises. After a while they will get used to your presence, and become more confident around you. When you've lulled them into a false sense of security, you can quickly clap a box over them and keep them for later use. There are other methods of attracting players of course, but this one works well for me.

Here's the situation: One of the characters in my campaign has killed a druid (an old-school druid, not one of these namby-pamby tree-huggers). In doing so, she activated his death curse, with the effect that she can no longer heal any wounds she receives as long as she's in the land of Erin. Also, any bruises or scratches, post-nasal drip, hangnails and toothaches will just hang around forever, gradually making her into a walking bundle of misery until eventually she dies. She can be healed magically, but it has only a short-term effect; by the next day all her old wounds will have opened and started seeping again. I'm thinking that it could be reflected pretty simply by a Suppress on her REC (only vs. BODY) and a very slow BODY Drain to reflect the gradual accumulation of minor injuries one inevitably suffers day to day. The only tricky bit is the undoing of any magical healing she gets. How would you build it?

You rock I love this sort of thing -- anything to cut down on the amount of work I have to do myself is a Good Thing.

There's also this to consider: many medieval noble families made the Sopranos look like solid upright citizens. If this character is in the habit of absenting himself from his estates, you can guarantee there's going to be some dastardly brother/sister/cousin/uncle in the wings just itching for the chance to depose him and take over. Even if that's not the case, his neighbours and court rivals aren't going to miss the opportunity to snaffle some or all of his lands to add to their own. A hell of a lot of medieval skullduggery got done in the law courts, and the easiest way to manage that was to initiate the proceedings when the victim wasn't around to defend the case. Alternately, you could have the situation as it existed in France and Germany for much of the medieval period (and later) where princes were a penny a bushel. The way estates were broken up due to the laws of inheritance meant that there were plenty of supposedly landed nobles around who had less land, and thus less income, than an average villager. In fact in Germany there was even a class of serf-knights -- genuinely noble by birth, but also bound to their land in exactly the same way as common serfs.

All of the powers within an Elemental Control can be used simultaneously, assuming the character can carry the END cost. That's not usually possible with a Multipower. It's functionally the same as buying all the powers straight -- that is, not having them in a framework at all. It's supposed to be means of giving a cost break for a well-conceived, internally logical character conception. Personally, I seldom use them.

It's from the latin, and as you said it's originally spelled faex. Just as the modern spelling of faeces allows for dropping the "a" (feces), so too with faex/fex. Source: the Chambers Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Revised Edition of 1890)

I just got my copy of Terran Empire, and so far I'm finding it pretty good. One thing which concerns me though is all the jokes my players are inevitably going to make when they find out about the existence of the Fex. I'm wondering if Mr Cambias knew what the word meant when gave the name to a major alien race? I'll give you a clue: the plural is "faeces".

I don't think the Speed Chart is broken, per se, but I also don't think it does a very good job of reflecting the way that combat works in the real world, and I don't use it. (Just to lay out my credentials in support of this opinion: I've been training in various martial arts for over 30 years now, and currently hold a sandan in aikido). Unfortunately, none of the variations I've tried have been entirely satisfactory either. What I'm looking for is a system which does several things: A higher SPD must be clearly beneficial Phase order must not be mechanical or predictable The system must engage the players so that they feel some control of their own destinies Low SPD characters must not be left hanging forever because of bad luck The system must not be a huge drag or bummer, causing wailing and lamentation through the nations of the world and bringing about the end of all things, causing civilization to fall. The system I'm currently considering uses a single randomizer die per player to indicate whether or not they get an action in the current Phase. Rolling their SPD or lower on the die indicates an action. If no action is indicated for the player, it becomes a Null Phase and only Aborts may be engaged in. A player always gets an action after a number of Null Phases, the exact number depending on the ratio of their SPD to 12 (the number of Phases per Turn). For example, a character with a SPD of 4 would get an action after 3 Null Phases, a SPD 3 character would get one after 4 Null Phases, and a SPD 2 character would get one after 6 Null Phases. So far, so good. The only problem I'm having is working out how many Null Phases should be required for SPDs 5 andhigher than 6, but I'm leaning towards SPD 5-8: 2, and SPD 9-11: 1. A SPD of 12 would, of course, require no Null Phases. As far as I can see without having yet playtested the system, this should fulfill all of my requirements, allowing the potential for luck to give a low-speed character a day of glory without making relative SPDs meaningless.

Go to http://www.winzip.com and download and install WinZip. It makes life pretty easy when dealing with zip files.

If you want to play around in Northern Europe in '42.... How about having the Good Guys assigned to foil an assassination attempt on Churchill by Nazi supers of the Geheime Ãœberlegene Kommando? Of course the whole affair would have to be kept strictly secret and out of the public eye, what with the information and resources being secretly provided to the nasty Nazis by certain members of the royal family. The SuperNazis could be staging from just about anywhere in Europe -- France, Holland, Norway are all nice spots for biffing around the Ãœbermensch. If you want to go for something with a higher OOC irony value and added moral dillemmas, you could substitute Stalin for Churchill. Get the gen on the Nazi plan via British or US Military Intelligence and send in the supers to keep the repellent murderous scumbag alive -- in that situation, they'd have to contend not only with the Nazi super assassins, but also with the paranoia of the NKVD and possibly have to do their job in spite of interference (quite probably lethal interference) from Soviet Supers. That's a nasty one -- if they succeed, Stalin will survive to murder millions and forever taint the Communist ideal with his megalomanic butchery. If they fail, the Soviet Union will be leaderless at a crucial juncture and will almost certainly fall, leaving Hitler to concentrate his forces undistracted by the Soviets. Maybe a little dark for a Golden Age campaign?

Yes, I agree. In fact I had meant to note that I only intended it for Heroic level games, but forgot to add that rider to my original post.

The "Mind-Numbing Stupidity" thread from the General Roleplaying board got me thinking about how to resolve the effect of swimming while carrying heavy weights. Clearly it's possible, from the anecdotal evidence of some of the participants in the thread, but the common feature of everyone who responded with "Yes, but..." is that it's not something that any old person can necessarily manage, but requires some considerable training and fitness. What I'm thinking of doing is this: Every 10% of the characters total Lift capability carried reduces the character's Swimimng by an increasing amount (sorry, don't know the correct mathematical term for this). In other words, for a normal person with a STR of 10 (max. Lift 100kg), carrying: up to 10kg their Swimming would be at -1" per Phase at 10-20kg their Swimming would be at -2" at 20-30kg at -4" at 30-40kg at -8" at 40-50kg at -16" and so on. The END expenditure would remain the same as that used before the encumbrance penalty, regardless of their actual movement rate. When the Swimming reaches 0 they can only tread water. Therefore, for a normal person with the default 2" Swimming to make any headway carrying 15kg, they would have to Swim at Non-combat speed, making -2" headway, at the END expenditure they'd normally have for swimming flat out. If the character's total possible Swimming falls below 0, they sink and possibly drown. I haven't yet considered how to modify the system for carrying more bouyant mass than, for example, steel armour or a sack of rocks. Comments?

Woo-hoo! Los Angeles! That means I can get there for only $1599 return! Ah well, I suppose until someone starts a GenCon Anzac I'll just have to carry on living vicariously

Stupidest spell ever? How about this one: The Priest of Light, staunch worshipper of the Sun God, whose magic pool was limited by "Only in direct sunlight"..... He built a Light spell.

Assuming a galleon has SPD 3, then presumably a crack crew, all also with SPD 3 or better, could put it through a 60° turn every 4 seconds. A galleon? There was never a galleon made that was that maneuverable. There's more than just rate of travel to consider when determining vehicle SPD, and for something like a galleon (or a zeppelin, or giant pleasure barge, or a 1970s Cadillac) there's a case for imposing a negative SPD. Disclaimer: I don't have TUV, so there is a faint possibility that I may be talking out of my arse.

Re: Two more questions I use Hero Designer, which you can get from the Online Store at this site. It makes life a lot easier, especially since I GM most of the time so I need to build a lot of characters and monsters. However, I'd recommend that initially you get used to building characters the old-fashioned way, out of the book. It's useful to know how to do the work, and how the character creation system works in some detail, before getting used to a tool that protects you from all the arithmetic.

Re: Cool Like.... a can of worms Now I have to go and write up stats for a Fleshworm Catapult.

That's an excellent idea -- it's not something I've had to deal with so far, but now that you've opened the can of worms... This could also be used to simulate the "creeping bombardment" effect, in which the AOE doesn't just spread out in all directions, but rather moves along a predetermined path, dissipating (or disappearing) when it reaches the end of the path. As an extra fillip, the "creep" could be defined as controlled or uncontrolled -- a controlled creep could be used to chase targets. I'm not sure how to cost such an effect though. It's powerful, but not as powerful as simply increasing the size of the AOE to incorporate the entire path. The length of the path, the rate at which it creeps, and of course the controllability of the creep would all have to be factored into the equation.

Just checking that I'm seeing what mozilla thinks I'm seeing: I've grabbed the files you've posted here, and the L2 spells appear to be a duplicate of the L1 file, L4 is actually a duplicate of L3, and L6-9 are all duplicates of the L5 hdc.zip Is that right, or is mozilla hallucinating? Excellent work so far, by the way. This will save me a hell of a lot of work -- thanks.

I have a guide to ballistics on my site at http://fitz.jsr.com/roleplay/ballistics/ballistics.html which demonstrates how high you have to jump to jump a given distance, if you want to work it out more-or-less exactly. Personally, I haven't found it to be a huge issue, but if you have a Leaper it wouldn't be too much trouble to figure out maximum horizontal leaping distances for a range of possible ceiling heights, and keep them noted on the character sheet somewhere.

The way I normally do it is like this: I wildly overestimate the capabilities of the party and bring them all to the point of imminent annihilation, all the whille desperately backpedalling to find some way that some of them can survive without making it appear that I'm protecting them OR I wildly underestimate the capabilities of the party and then start frantically trying to find ways to stop everyone yawning and going to sleep. It's a talent.

No, really, six seconds is feasible. I swear I've dressed that fast when I was late for work.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand..... I don't want much. Just a complete reformat of the whole thing Something I've always wanted is a copy of everything HERO -- Fred plus all the genre books -- in a single volume, A5 format, printed on rice paper with thumb-indents for each chapter, and bound in gold-embossed morrocco leather. Basically, what I want is something that looks and feels like those really expensive bibles you see. Too much to ask? You think?