tancred

Re: help with ship clasifications

I have found the basic question to become one of “fighters or no fighters”.

 

A few basic points. Once again all just my opinion.

 

A fighter is a small 1-3 person attack ship. It is fast and highly maneuverable, but has little or no endurance. For whatever reason (life support, tiny cockpit where the pilot cannot leave his seat, etc.) the ship has a limited endurance and range. Useless without a mothership or other base to come back to.

 

A bomber is slightly bigger than a fighter. Trading maneuverability for payload and range/endurance. Still limited and dependent on a mothership or base.

 

Using these basic ideas I come up with two Starship Fleet models.

 

Model 1: No Fighters, for whatever reason the use of fighters and bombers just doesn’t work in space. This would basically make the Dreadnought Era the perfect model. Since it is hard to hide in space and equally hard to get close to someone who doesn’t want to. Most battles are between smaller ships over locations. For big actions concentrated battle fleets try for the decisive blow over an area of strategic importance. All classifications are viable, Gunboats, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battlecruisers, etc.

 

Model 2: Fighters exist and are viable weapon systems. This will pretty much eliminate many “classes” as useless in a space environment. Small gunboats/corvettes will operate independently and in planetary systems. Carriers rule. Small, medium or large, they will probably be more of a hybrid fusion of modern cruiser and carrier. But they will be the primary warship. A smaller non-carrier warship will act as escort and protection combining the role of destroyer/frigate/cruiser. So my universe with fighters has the following:

 

Fighter: Small ship designed to attack targets and interdict other fighters. Low endurance needs a base to rearm, replenish life support and allow the crew to rest.

 

Bomber: Basically a larger fighter designed to attack larger targets.

 

Carrier: The big stick.

One thing that I've found interesting is the fighters/no fighters choice. Different genres/games handle it different ways.

Modern day (since 1942, anyway) has shown that real-world aircraft are extremely dangerous to ships. Thus, the carrier is the modern queen of battle, the ship that must be protected as the center of a fleet.

Star Fleet Battles, on the other hand, has "fighters" that can barely damage a cruiser, let alone a dreadnought or carrier.

In that game, a carrier's firepower (a full squadron) is an adequate substitute for a cruiser, but not much more than that.

That difference in power level of the fighter defines how your fleet will use and view fighters.

Re: Star Hero:?

true. of course there were some good bits here and there after the "golden age" but it wasn't a boom like it was earlier. and thanks for the clarification on Dr. Who. always thought it was cool' date=' but never got the chance to watch much. on a side note, has anyone seen the new Dr. Who on BBC America? i think its pretty good, but again, never got to see much of the original, so hard to tell quality wise, how it is.[/quote']

 

The Sci-Fi Channel is also running the new Doctor Who, actually has newer episodes than BBC America is showing.

 

I've watched Doctor Who off and on since the 70's; it used to be shown on a local PBS station.

I've seen at least one or two episodes of every one of the Doctors. IMHO, Christopher Eccleston was the best Doctor EVER. I don't say that lightly, as I was a huge fan of Tom Baker (the longest-running Doctor). David Tennant is growing on me, though.

 

Quality-wise, the show is as good or better than ever. The writing seems tighter, and the acting is definitely as good or better than it ever was.

 

As a side note, Doctor Who is the longest-running science fiction series ever. (Can't remember where I read that, but it is bound to be true. As pointed out above, it debuted in 1963 and ran continuously until into the 90's.)

Re: New NBC Show: Chuck

Chuck was really good; my wife liked it as much as I did. And she's MUCH pickier than I am, so that's a good recommendation.

Whether they can keep it up or not, I don't know, but I'll keep watching.

Journeyman was good. And the ending ROCKED.

I liked the show up to that point; that last line convinced me I will be watching it again.

Re: [How To] Prevent Corpse Decay

Change Environment UAA?

Surprisingly, this is the way the Fantasy Hero Grimoire does it. The Perfect Embalming spell (page 163) is Change Environment, Reduced Endurance, Uncontrolled. (It's not UAA, though.)

Steve, I'm trying to work up the spells from the Fantasy Hero Grimoire and I've found one I can't figure out.

FHG page 165, the Soul Feeding spell (Necromancy).

The spell is listed as Aid END and STUN 2d6, Uncontrolled, at 80 Active Points.

1. There's no Variable Effect Advantage listed, to allow it to add to both END and STUN. Should it be there? (If you do, I can't make the 80 Active Points come out right.)

2. You can't put Uncontrolled on an Instant power; at least, Hero Designer says that's the reason you can't select Uncontrolled for this spell.

So how should this spell read?

Thank you!

Re: New to Fantasy Hero

Note to self -- get some of these character packs. Especially the Bestiaries and ABs.

Shop carefully, though.

The Bestiary is quite the bargain; only $6.99. (It was one of the very first character packs released, and somewhat under-priced, IMO.)

Many of the later packs run $30.00, because they contain essentially everything in their respective book EXCEPT the actual descriptions.

At that price, I have to choose between buying the pack and ordering a new book. So far, the book wins every time.

For that very reason, I'm keying in the spells from the Fantasy Hero Grimoire myself. The good side to that is, I'm sure learning about all the spells that will be used in my Turakian Age game. It has also let me figure out ground rules for players creating new spells for my campaign.

Generally speaking, the genre book character packs are the better bargains (Star Hero, Fantasy Hero, etc.). And the UMA-Ninja Hero, Bestiary, and Turakian Age packs are WELL worth the price, IMO. I don't have the packs for the other Ultimate books, but I'm considering them.

Re: New to Fantasy Hero

Welcome aboard, White Lion. And have some rep.

One thing I can't believe Thia didn't mention: Hero Designer. (He's the only one here who's a bigger booster for it than I am.)

Hero Designer is your indispensable tool for everything Hero.

You will find yourself designing characters faster than you ever thought you could. It does the math for you, AND it enforces the rules, helping you make sure anything you write is legal.

It's a steal for only $25.00.

You can purchase character packs from the various books. The Bestiary character pack is a particularly good bargain, at $6.99.

ALL the creatures (monsters, animals, EVERYTHING) from the Bestiary book already done in HD, ready to be customized to suit you at a second's notice.

This pack includes all the various templates for customizing creatures that are listed in the book, as well. These make it even easier to customize a monster on the spur of the moment.

Need an Infernal wolf? Load up the wolf character sheet, load the Infernal prefab, and add the abilities to the wolf. Voila! done.

Buy it NOW. You'll be glad you did.

Re: Weapon Damage in Traveller Hero

In both Star Hero and Terran Empire, plasma/fusion guns were done as EBs. Whether underpowered or not, it seems like it's staying true to the original Hero plasma guns. Maybe that's where the choice came from. I thought it was interesting myself, I started playing Traveller with Traveller T20, and the FGMPs did like 20d12 worth of damage or something...simply insane in a d20 world, it could blow up a tank in that game without much effort-probably the idea.

 

Incidentally that was an abnormally long sentence. I abused many a comma back there...tragic.

That must be why the EB rather than RKA choice, seeing them done that way for Star Hero and Terran Empire. (It's been a LONG time since we did those write-ups; I really don't remember now.)

FGMPs SHOULD do an insane amount of damage. IIRC, in CT even rolling minimum damage (all 1's) is an all-but guaranteed kill on a character, and average damage will take out most vehicles, even armored ones.

As to Challenge magazine, I was one who was very disappointed by it. I did NOT want to pay more for so many pages of non-Traveller stuff, and let my subscription lapse after something like 2 issues.

I do miss the Journal; great magazine.

Re: Weapon Damage in Traveller Hero

Most of the weapon write-ups that I did were conversions from CT.

These were in fact mostly straight ports over from Dark Champions, using the "Antique Equivalents" sections from the LBBs to tell me which DC weapon to grab.

Some of the weapons are from later editions, which I don't have. In those cases, other authors did the conversions and I just worked them up in Hero Designer.

I don't remember now why the Plasma/Fusion Guns were done as EBs rather than RKAs. I'm pretty sure that every time I've seen them written up they were done that way.

Re: Starting over

snip

It's easy to do with the application of a little patience and some common sense.

AND Hero Designer! :thumbup:

Re: TE Starship Design Theory

Nolgroth, for the ship construction system you may want to take a look at Traveller Hero.

The simple construction system there is converted from Traveller's, which meets most of your criteria. It includes (in Hero terms) all the various components that go into a starship.

We didn't do anything about changing vehicle combat, but the construction system may help you.

Re: Starting over

Penn, welcome to the board!

You have a lot of work ahead of you, but there are a couple of things that can help.

First, RIGHT NOW, buy Hero Designer, if you haven't already.

It's a STEAL for only $25, and it will make your life MUCH easier. It is so very easy to use, and makes creating whatever is in your head go very quickly indeed.

You can also pick up the character pack for the Bestiary for a song, to give you monsters ready to use.

Second, for your Fantasy Hero game, let me echo what keyes_bill said. The beautiful thing about Hero is that you aren't limited by the system. Consider getting away from the D&D magic system, and letting your imagination run wild.

I'm starting a Turakian Age game, using that book and the 2 Fantasy Hero Grimoires, and it is going to be a blast.

I happen to really like the magic system Turakian Age uses, and I think my (so-far-only-one) magic-using player is going to, too. Give it a look, if your budget will stretch that far (I know that problem; it's why I don't have Post-Apocalyptic Hero yet).

Re: Spell Storage Items

Another possibility might be to use Delayed Effect (rather than Trigger) as the Naked Advantage. Seems like that would give you the same result: cast the spell into the item and it holds it for you.

Now I have to go make one of these for my Turakian Age players to find....

Re: What books are good for ships

Comstar also has some more Traveller Hero books, the Golden Age Starships series.

Check them out at http://www.comstar-games.Com

Re: Minor correction in Traveller Hero Book 1

Me either, really. I think I used them for one passing encounter.

Ironically, I didn't notice until after I'd worked them up that the writeup in JTAS specifically says they're NOT suited for player characters ("Jgd player characters are out of the question"). They're simply too alien.

Re: Minor correction in Traveller Hero Book 1

I think that crept in when I first started working that race up.

In the document that I scanned from the Contact! articles, the race name shows as "THE JGD-LL-JAGD " in the title of that section.

More than likely, it scanned that way and I never caught it.

Re: HTH combat questions

Maybe I missed it earlier in the thread, but I think there's one point overlooked:

If both characters are the same SPD, and the defender (successfully) Blocks, he AUTOMATICALLY goes before the attacker on their next Phase (5ER, page 383).

Thus, using a Block at least creates the possibility of breaking the stalemate.

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

LOVE these deck plans, Alathan.

My vote would go to the Far Trader; that's a ship I used a lot in various Traveller games over the years.

Re: First Impressions of Traveller Hero

If you roll up a character by Traveller rules then use the Traveller Hero conversion rules to turn him into a Hero character, an older character may have more points than a younger one, due to more skills. Of course, his Characteristics are likely to be lower due to aging.

Was that what you meant?

Re: Alien Stereotypes

Excellent suggestion! I already have and have read Star Hero though. I'm looking for some suggestions as to those stereotypes not found in the book, or of other takes on those stereotypes.

 

Any other Star Hero books which may prove useful?

Take a look at Terran Empire, if you don't already have it.

It has a lot of other races to use.

Not much in the way of stereotypes that haven't already been mentioned, but some interesting races there.

Re: Genie

A slightly radical thought, but you might not have to use either Follower or Summon.

Reasoning from effect, the Genie is just the special effect for what he can do for you.

You could just buy the powers you want, and put the Genie as the Focus Limitation on them. The Focus might even be Inaccessible, if it can teleport back to you.

Probably also with Gestures (since you have to open the bottle) and perhaps Incantations, since you have to give the Genie his orders.

Just a couple of things to think about...

Re: help with building powers

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I'd do this with a substantial bonus to the stealth skill, and call it a superpower.

 

7 points + 5 stealth (only when in shadow -1/2)

5 points + 5 stealth (only when in shadow AND only moving slowly)

5 +2 DCV (14- activation, only when in shadow)

 

Might want to give a similar bonus to Concealment Skill.

I'd give it an additional Limitation "Only To Conceal Self, -½" since it's for hiding yourself, not concealing other objects.

Re: Spell Active/ Real Cost in Average Games

I have to agree with everyone else, it isn't just the point costs that matter.

I'm starting a Turakian Age game, using the published Grimoires as my magic system. There is a wide range of Active Point costs just in the books. For the game I'm going to run, several spells are far too powerful and I will be toning them down. Others, even with high Active Point costs, just aren't that powerful. I suspect they will either get ignored entirely or that I'll be asked to re-write them to make them more useful.

Because of the Requires A Skill Roll Limitation, and the default for it being -1 per 10 Active Points, I prefer to see spells in the 10-60 Active Point cost range, but you still have to judge each spell individually for effectiveness.

Re: [Review] Fantasy Hero Grimoire I

I'm starting up a new Turakian Age game soon, and we're going to ues both Grimoires as is.

I've run Fantasy Hero before, but not the Turakian Age. In particular, I've never run FH with Cost Multipliers, and I'm curious to see how that works out.

I only have one player who wants to be a mage anyway, so I think it will work well enough. He doesn't have to work up his own spells, and I don't have to work through deciding whether to approve them.

We probably will be adding spells to the various schools, if we decide that there are spells that are appropriate but missing.

Re: Monk

One of the characters in the Turakian Age game I am starting is a monk (a Drakine monk, at that).

He wanted to have several of the Ch'i powers from Ultimate Martial Artist, which fit very well with his character concept.

I decided to allow him the same Cost Multiplier (1/3) for these powers that the mages get for their spells in the standard Turakian Age system.

He didn't go crazy buying the powers, and it looks like they will not be unbalancing. He has plenty of other things to spend experience on anyway, so I don't expect the powers will get so high-powered that I have to rein him in.

If you have UMA, take a look at the various abilities there; I think those might fit well for you.