Fitz

Re: Herophile Fantasy art

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Here's the companion to the map of the Northlands I posted a little while ago; this time the southern half of the campaign area. It's a PDF, about 1.1 MB, and it's still a work in progress (though mostly complete) http://mojobob.com/roleplay/hero/fantasy/highfantasyhero/maps/south.pdf

Re: Clever Future Weapons Memory-form flechette - the individual flechettes are manufactured in a spiral form, and then straightened. When exposed to warmth and moisture (such as from being inserted at high velocity into a human body) the flechettes revert to their original helical form, wrapping themselves around bones and arteries and probably doing a bit more tearing in the process. Bleeach.

Re: Higher Point Characters in FH/Heroic setting That's not a bad idea. It reminds me of the system used in Bushido about a hundred years ago, in which one played a line of characters; player's actions had a direct effect not only on their current character, but also on their descendents. The issue of characters with too much XP hasn't come up in our campaigns (yet). We have some old AD&D conversions running around that we've played since about 1980 with near enough to 500 character points, and though the style of play changes somewhat they're still quite workable in a Fantasy Hero setting.

Re: constant spell HSR p 257, Duration Advantages - Continuous: "This +1 Advantage allows a character to use an Attack Power (or other Instant Power) on a continuing basis without having to make a new Attack Roll every Phase against the same target." So no, you don't have to make an attack roll each time, and it takes effect on each of your Phases; I would assume that it keeps going as long as you keep paying END or until its cancellation conditions are met.

Re: fear-ability Offensive PRE is good for things that are immediately frightening (the BOO! factor). For critters that exude a sort of fear "aura" (like demons and what-not) I generally give them an AoE PRE Drain, so that anyone in the vicinity becomes progressively less and less able to resist their scariness.

Re: Railroading - Forcing PCs to take certain actions I note you said "leave and join the army" -- I take it Thodric isn't trying to get everyone else to join up too? Is Thodric so important to the campaign that you have to force everyone else to follow his lead? I find it best just to lay it on the line in my campaigns; I'm not interested in running a bunch of solo campaigns, so if someone wants to leave the party -- fine, but either they start another character who wants to *stay* with the party, or they stop playing in my campaign. I need players who are prepared to cooperate in a group activity. That doesn't mean that they always have to go along with what everyone else is doing, but it does mean that they have to make some kind of effort to facilitate the game.

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10 I'm finding it works just fine, but then I'm running a cinematic High Fantasy game in which PCs can expect to wade through oceans of nameless minions to get to the real bad guys. It's not a rule you want to use in any kind of gritty realistic game.

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10 In my FH campaign, all the normals start with stats of 8, while PCs get 10 because they're so gosh-darned heroic and superior and all. However, I generally use the "Mook Rule" when it comes to massed combat: any hit that does more than half their BODY takes out an unimportant NPC, otherwise they're effectively unharmed. That sometimes means some fantastically lucky mook might take more damage than would kill a brontosaurus over the course of a fight, but not often -- and if they were that lucky, then clearly they must have been a major minion, slumming it with the mooks

Re: Herophile Fantasy art That's not too bad at all, and pretty much as I imagined him. My only quibble would be with the huge falchion; Smirnoff's weapon of choice was a huge +4 two-handed lochaber axe. Mind you, I can't really complain -- when I drew him I gave him a puny longsword and dagger

Re: Advantagous sfx If we do not allow SFX to have any impact on their associated Powers, then we have to expect that either every user of a particular Power is going to be pretty much identical to every other, or else that we have to be very careful during the Power construction to apply just the right Advantages and Limitations to account for every possible future consideration. Personally, I prefer to just live with the expectation that SFX may have an effect on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of Powers. It provides a bit of wiggle room that I like; excessive rigidity just isn't as much fun.

Re: RFC: Sharing the Cost of Powers It seems like a reasonable idea to me, and I'd have no particular problem with it. Assuming the GM enforces Active Point limits in the campaign, there's no real reason that I can see to disallow this construction. The "Ritual" Limitation goes part of the way to achieving it, but doesn't quite make it.

Re: Looking for expanded PRE Attack effects Neither of those are precisely what I was looking for, though the USM is closer in concept to the article I'm thinking of. The article had specific result bands for EGO/PRE +40, +50 and +60. Whether it's really worth while going to that much specific detail is a matter of opinion, and certainly it's not the sort of thing that's likely to be a regular feature of any campaign I run (much to the relief of my players, no doubt )

Some time ago I found a proposal for expanding the effects of PRE Attacks beyond the "EGO + 30" range. I found it interesting, saved it, printed it, and then lost every trace of it. Does anyone know where I might be able to find it again? I've Googled without success.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Kay -- Kay the eternally outraged and frustrated

Re: Herophile Fantasy art What, no uvula? Nice.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art Well, if he were to mysteriously fall under a bus..... But seriously, I don't think he's in any danger from me. Apart from anything else, I've found that making a living from a hobby is a double-edged sword; it can be a lot of fun, but if it turns into a chore then it just sucks all the fun right back out, and then you've lost a perfectly good hobby. I'm not saying that I'll never, ever do any RPG illustration, but I'd be reluctant unless the terms and deadlines made it fun rather than a big drag. Someone once said "Clients can become friends, but friends shouldn't become clients". That's how I feel about gaming and work.

Re: Herophile Fantasy art This is a revamp of one of the maps for my ancient and creaking fantasy campaign world, that I've been using off and on since the early eighties. It was originally done with ink and watercolour, but I've scanned it and tittivated it up a bit in Photoshop and CorelDraw. Now that the basic work is done, it should be a piece of cake to make any campaign-relevant updates as needed. http://mojobob.com/roleplay/hero/fantasy/highfantasyhero/maps/north.pdf The link points to a PDF file, about 775 kilobytes. If you're interested in what the original looked like, the scans are on my site too.

Re: Daily Art Findings

Re: New World Map I feel your pain. I've long come to the realization that for the most part, any world-building stuff I do has to be for my own amusement. If stuff is forcibly brought to the players' attention they'll usually say something polite, but they really don't care all that much.

Re: Question on Hydra-like monsters. In my experience, limited Duplication works better for most multi-headed critters (like hydra) than any of the other mechanics mentioned; like Susano I find that it better represents the semi-independent nature of them. I'd use Autofire in a situation where a creature has multiple attacks but single intelligence, when the attacks are normally used against a single opponent, like a giant squid's tentacles.

Re: Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again I think if they're having fun, then more power to them. It's a pity it's not to your taste, and it wouldn't be much to mine, but in the end the only real point of gaming is to have fun.

Re: Take your time The idea of stepping up the Time Chart with group size is a good one, I think. But it will necessarily be a variable, which is currently addressed by modifiers to the base roll. In any case, the factor of difficulty for finding a familiar/unfamiliar mind should be very different. I think you could get a reasonable analogy for the task by imagining it as looking for a single face in a group photo. Finding a familiar face is going to be relatively easy, because you don't have to involve any conscious brain function -- you can just scan and the face will be obvious as soon as you see it. Even in a fairly huge group, it won't really take all that long. If it's someone with whom you have a casual aquaintance it may or may not take longer, simply because you're more likely to encounter false positives which then have to be analysed and discarded before continuing the scan. Someone you're looking for simply by description would take forever with a group of any size, and I strongly suspect that you'd end up with a sizeable group which you'd then have to test individually by making contact and "tasting" them, so to speak. Is that clear, or have I just garbled it again?

Re: No Recovery in in Conbat I run a house rule a possible variation you might like to try: there are no free Post-Segment-12 Recoveries, and you can't Recover END (or STUN) in any Phase in which you use END (or take STUN, if you're recovering STUN). Any character who wants to Recover therefore has to make sure that they're able to stop for a moment to take a Recovery without being walloped. I picture it as the characters staggering away from the fight for a moment to stand with their hands on their knees red-faced and wheezing

Re: How do construct the ability to activate others' powers? How about a VPP "Mimic" Pool, all powers bought Indirect (originating from the target character)?