Fitz

Re: And off we go! You can bet that the instant you post the write-up, I'm going to sneak in in the dead of night, nick it, file off the serial numbers, inflict it on my hapless players, and then give them all your email address so that they can send their whining, grizzling and moaning to you direct

Re: What fundamental thing would you change about the Hero system? I like the idea of making Killing an advantage on damage, rather than having it as a separate power. I'm tempted to try it out in my campaign and see how it plays. I'd get rid of Energy Blast and fold it into a generic "Attack" power, which could then be specifically defined with advantages and limitations -- e.g. Ranged, No Added STR Damage, Killing, NND, AoE, etc. etc. I'd change the dice rolling mechanic from Low=Good (11- base) to High=Good (10+ base) -- I've found that for many people (myself included), addition is much easier and more intuitive than subtraction. I too am in favour of going back to the old Growth/Shrinking (always on) to build big or small critters; in fact, that's the way I still do it in my own campaign.

Re: Area of a hexagon Because my maths skills frankly suck, I always did it by visualizing a rectangle encompassing the width of the hex from side to side, and from one corner to the opposite two internal angles. Like this: Notice that the area of the left and right green bits are identical. Also note that the image is about five times bigger than it needs to be, but not to worry, because the file size is teensy-tiny.

Re: So the King is a Vampire It really depends on the sort of campaign I'm running at the time, and the sort of vampires appropriate to the campaign. If vampirism is some kind of nasty spiritual drain, using the blood as a medium, then only human (or maybe sentient) blood will do (e.g. a Fantasy vampire, or possibly a Cthulhoid Horror campaign fiend). If vampirism is just a digestive thing, then any sort of haemoglobin-based blood will do the trick (e.g. a Sci-Fi alien creature, or maybe a previously-undiscovered Pulp campaign critter from Darkest Africa). If it's a psychological abberation, then probably only human, but dependent on the particular delusion involved (e.g. maybe a modern "X-Files" type campign). That's the great thing about vampires; they're so flexible. There's a vampire for every job

Re: So the King is a Vampire Having a vampire for a king wouldn't have much of an impact on your average medevaloid kingdom, I wouldn't have thought, apart from the possible stigma of being ruled by a Foul Fiend of the Undead. Assuming His Royal Undeadness is interested in being a reasonable monarch (rather than an eeeeevil Overlord), he could probably get by just feeding on condemned criminals -- there never seemed to be any shortage of them in Ye Olde Kingdoms; in fact it's quite likely that he'd end up one of the fattest vampires ever known. Those sentenced in non-capital cases might just be condemned to a morning tea roster, and so lose a bit of juice every week or so but not actually die. Court life would be a bit odd, especially for visiting dignitaries, since the hours would be reversed with everything being done at night. Nocturnal hawking parties could be taken using owls instead of falcons.

Re: More Difficult Than Average Wasn't there a use of Extradimensional Movement proposed for this sort of thing? As in "character moves to dimension where the desired conditions apply"?

I'm running a FH campaign at the moment, in which one of the characters is a fairy. Her major power is the ability to change things into other things with her fairy wand (she has a bunch of Transforms -- cosmetic, minor and major). When it comes to major transformations, often she wants to turn something small (say, a pebble) into something big (say, a statue). The maximum size and mass she can create depends, naturally, on the material she's creating and the amount of BODY rolled on her Transform dice. I've decided that nothing can be made of nothing, so if she's increasing the mass of something with her transformation, the extra mass comes from the surrounding air. The thing I don't know how to work out is how much air that uses. The Object BODY Table on p.449 is fine, as far as it goes, but how much does a cubic metre of air mass? The party are spelunking at the moment, so air usage could actually be important in some places. Edit: by the Magic of the Interweb, I managed to answer my own question. Assuming an average of 1.3g/l, that means that a cubic metre of air would have 1 BODY. Now I just need to find out where I put the info about the volume of a Hex

Re: Name that Disad If you wanted to treat it as a disad, you could go for "Social Limitation: Public ID (easily recognised, restricted group)" for about 10 points, though it's not a perfect fit.

Re: Your Hero Web Page Mine is at http://mojobob.com/roleplay/roleplay.html -- there's a bunch of stuff there for D&D and Hero, though the D&D campaign(s) have been defunct for a few years now. There's also some non-system-specific doo-dads as well.

I don't like the way the Armour Piercing advantage works, so I've decided to replace it with one based on the old Piercing advantage (from Champions II, I think). Rather than buying an advantage that simply halves the target's defences, you buy levels of Armour Piercing as an Adder -- effectively, extra Normal attack dice that have no damaging effect on the target, and are used solely to bypass either ED or PD (defined when the power is built). I'm in the process of costing them out based on EB (0 END, Only to penetrate defences, and possibly No Range), and what I'm wondering is what sort of limitation value "Only to penetrate defences" would be worth? At the moment I've gone with -1, but I'm wondering if it should be more considering that what I'm building here are damage dice that do no damage.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

Re: Fantasy GM's - question... I've had shape-shifters in my own campaign, and I find it easiest just to get the player to make a "KS: Critters of the World" (an Everyman skill in my campaign) roll, modified -0 to -8 by the rarity/obscurity of the desired form. If they make the roll, they know enough about the creature to be able to imitate it (superficially, at least). I get them to keep a list of the forms they've tried, successfully or not, for future reference -- if they failed the roll, then in future they'll have to research the critter if they want to be able to try it again. If they failed badly then they don't even know the thing exists. And if they made it, then they don't have to re-roll for the same form in future.

Re: 2nd Thoughts About the Hit Location Chart I don't really have anything useful to contribute to this discussion, but I'll just note that while I really like using the HitLoc Chart, my players universally hate and fear it and all voted to not use it in our current campaign. Especially the guy who always gets hit in location 13. Every time. It's amazing.

Re: And off we go! That all sounds like a great hoot! (Or possibly squawk -- I assume quorrocks squawk?)

Re: I need a gun. There was a French pistol designed at the end of the 19th century (don't recall the manufacturer -- possibly LeMat?) that I've always thought would be the ideal pulp adventurer's sidearm. It was an under-and-over double barrelled revolver, the lower barrel chambering a single 10-guage shotgun shell and the upper firing big fat soft lead slugs from the revolving chambers (7 shots, if I recall correctly). It was probably an awful heavy ungainly thing to use in real life, but it looked pretty cool, and in game-world that shotgun shell comes in awful handy when you're fighting off masses of cultists in some twisty-turny catacombs Edit: It was LaMat, not LeMat, and the revolver held 9 11mm rounds over one shotgun cartridge. There's a picture of it here

Can anyone point me towards any pre-existing examples of diseases already costed out? I could do it myself, but I'd rather not have to re-do stuff that's already out there. I'm building a Dispel-based "Cure Disease" spell, and I want to know how hefty it needs to be to cure, say, the common cold or leprosy.

Re: Suggested Point Caps I'm currently running a 100/100 High Fantasy campaign, and finding that even 200 points isn't enough; the characters still keep getting the snot kicked out of them. I suppose I could lower the challenge of the various monsters and what-not they're up against, but I really don't want to -- I'm seriously considering bumping the base up to 200/100.

Re: Perception in combat It depends on just how realistic you want your combat to be. Massed gunfire, even of small arms is deafening - literally, that's why the army gives their soldiers earmuffs when they're out on the shooting range. Being shot at with small-arms fire isn't very loud at all. If you're near enough to shellfire to be caught in the shockwave (but far enough away to live) the chances are that you won't be hearing anything much for a while afterwards, and there's a good chance you'll be temporarily blind as well. That's all very well, but it's not very cinematic, and it's not much fun. If I was trying to run a battlefield scenario I'd probably just apply a -1 to -3 PER modifier to indicate the general confusion and leave it at that.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art I use both quite a lot (though I'm still quite a newbie at Painter). I've always found Photoshop to excell at image editing rather than creation -- by which I mean that it gives better results if working up from an image created by traditional means (pencils, charcoal etc.) and scanned. Its selection capabilities are better (or at least easier) than Painter's, and it allows for a much wider range of layer interactions. Painter, on the other hand, is capable of an immense range of "natural media" effects, imitating the effects of traditional media. It allows for interactive mixing of colours right on the image as you paint, and for the easy creation of naturalistic textural effects. I haven't even begun to penetrate the full extent of its capabilities in this regard. You can also "paint" with pre-defined symbols as in this image (approx 450 KB), a map-doodle I did to try out building and using them. I like them both a lot, but they're definitely distinct tools, each fit for a different purpose.

Re: Daily Art Findings He's good, no question about it

Re: Drakine pics? Have you tried doing a Google image search for "draconian"?

Re: Daily Art Findings It's nicely done, but it looks to me like a pastiche of Caspar-David Friedrich's interminable Victorian "Gothic ruin" paintings.

Re: Conceptualizing Speed Actually, that reminds me, I wanted to detach movement from SPD. The problem is how to do so -- I can't think of an elegant way of doing it. I considered assuming a base combat Running rate of 12" per Turn as standard (same as a SPD 2 Normal) and having the players able to use a fraction of that per Phase, but it all starts getting more complex and cumbersome than I'm happy with in what's supposed to be a fun activity. I suppose in the end I'll just let inertia have its evil way with me and do nothing, as usual

Re: 6 Months later... It looks good; I've only given it a cursory overview so far, but I intend to read it properly later (when I'm not supposed to be doing something else )

Re: Spells You Don't Want to Model in FH I personally, as a player, would not want anyone in the party to build an Anger God spell. As a GM I think it'd be a hoot