Rapier

You are right. I'm so deep into this I don't always say what I mean! I tend towards 10 Mins + 1 Min/Success or 20 Mins + 2 Mins/Success. But I also have the 1 Min + 10s/Success and 2 Mins + 20s/Success. It was the latter two that I was particularly referring to. I think when I decided to write this I was working on a long duration spell and it just got stuck in my brain. 1 Min = 5 Turns, even though I'm using the "Minutes" unit Hero doesn't actually have a Time Chart option for 10s but dealing with time all our lives 10s seems more of a natural step than the odd-sounding 12s. I was about to say I try and avoid mixing units but I already am, so what difference if I say 1 Min + 12 Sec or 1 Min + 1 Turn. I should really go back and change those 10s and 20s to 1 Turn and 2 Turns, respectively, shouldn't I?

Yeah, I keep a hairy eyeball on the meter but I don't panic until I start getting warnings. I lost about an hour's worth of work yesterday when it locked up after a memory warning (after an hour of waiting for the error box to actually paint completely I just killed the process) so I'm saving OFTEN now (as I should have been all along). I try to grab what I need and close the other prefab as much as possible. I'll bump up the memory a bit and keep splitting the files as an option for later. Thanks!!

Howdy ho, Simon! So, I'm building Prefabs for the AD&D (1st Edition) spells. I've got separate Prefabs for Clerics, Druid, and Magic-Users. There is quite a bit of overlap (the Magic-User Detect Magic spell is almost the same as the Druid Detect Magic Spell which is almost the same as the Cleric Detect Magic spell) so I am kind of flipping between the different Prefabs and copying stuff from one to the other. The Cleric prefab sucks up about 42MB out of the 64MB recommended (it's got about 100 spells in it, same as the druid, but the magic-users have about 200 spells and I'm worried about down the road especially). I'm constantly running in the high 50s and frequently getting Low Memory errors. I know that I shouldn't tinker with the memory setting unless absolutely necessary. So I'm wondering, do I tinker with the memory for a bit (lowering it back later) or do I split the files? I'd REALLY like to keep it in a single file but if this is going to be an ongoing problem maybe it's best to do it now. After all, I'll eventually be posting this entire mess for others to use and even with loading/unloading the prefab as necessary that's a lot of memory to be sucking up for a prefab. Do prefabs take up less memory when Loaded (as opposed to open for editing)? Thanks for the help. -r EDIT: What about running two versions of HD simultaneously? That seems to get me around my immediate memory problem, but is this a good idea? EDIT EDIT: Nevermind. Running two copies of HD doesn't allow me to copy an item from one instance to another. That's no help at all.

I had a Shower Thought (tm) last night that there is so much FH material out there that all conversions and such is nothing more than World Building. You don't need to convert or develop a longsword, just grab one off the shelf. You don't need to build an Ogre, just grab one off the shelf. All the time is spent (especially in FH) on designing how Magic Works. I'm really, actually, VERY happy with how I've built magic. I think it is consistent with the genre and with AD&D (more or less) but even better is that it falls in line very well with how Hero and Fantasy Hero in particular works. I'm honestly tickled pink that it is going so well. Eventually, I will want to write up a Primer on Magic for the players. I might start that as a break from converting. I'll def also be posting ALLLLLLLL of this mess when I'm done. If you want to bounce ideas around let me know. I'm hip deep in magic and have had MANY conversations with myself on the topic!

Oh, and I decided that there is a SLIGHT distinction between 2 Phases and a Full Turn. I can get away with some of this because they are only SPD 2. Higher speeds might be a problem but I needn't worry about that. 2 Phases: Start casting on Segment 6, at your DEX on Segment 12 your spell fires. 1 Turn: Start casing on Segment 6, POST Segment 12 your spell fires. So the difference is that in the second case, absolutely everyone gets the opportunity to interrupt your casting.

Y'allz some lazy bitches. Won't even lend a thought. Harumph. I'm kidding, of course. I'm using Time Limit for Duration effects (of course). So I frequently give spells say 10 Minutes for a duration base, but then they get a bonus for every levels of success on their Magic Skill roll (ie if you have a 14- Magic Skill and roll a 12 that is two levels of success since you are two under). I've been using +10s for the bonus. So in total the Duration (Time Limit) is 10 Minutes + 10s/Success. But that isn't very Speed Charty now, is it? Would I be better off breaking fractions of a minute into even Turns? 10 Minutes + 1 Turn/Success? That would make things a bit easier on the old Speed Chart. Obviously 10s is 10 segments and maybe that doesn't sync up with your Phases but that should still be ok I would think. Just wondering what y'all were thinking. So someone say something because the crickets in this place are cumbersome. EDIT: It might have been nice to have this thought before I finished all the Cleric and Druid spells, but what can you do? Editing is the easy part.

Some of the wording was pretty bad, but that was the way it was written. Eventually, I will want to get rid of some of that atrocious diction. Oh and I finished Druids today!

Just mark them. I think I turned on Track Changes, but I'm not sure that would carry over to another word processor.

No it's definitely meant for reference. Once we get everything proofed I'll set it to merge. I'll export to a text file and the merge it into the Word doc, easy peasy.

I'm not really worried about the layout. I've got it tightened down pretty well. The only thing I'm pondering is if I should include the Hero build in the Spellbook. I can see an argument either way.

I sent in the request.

I assumed that if they wanted it public they would have left it up or posted it themselves. I mean Steve wrote it. If they wanted it up it would be, neh? I mean I guess I can and if they don't want it up they can take it down or whatever.

I found a copy on some weird website. Had to create an account there to download them, but I have them if anyone wants them drop me a note.

I know I used to have a copy of the old Writer's Guidelines around someplace but I'll be damned if I can find them. They were pretty handy as a baseline, anyone still have a copy? I looked around here but can't seem to find them. Thanks! EDIT: I'm doing 6th Edition but I don't think the rules version really impacts the guidelines. thnks. -r

Working on GenCon conversions, yadda, yadda. SO I've gotten all the cleric spells converted. I've got all the descriptions done. Things are going pretty well and I am happily months ahead of schedule. However, I was pre-proofing the HD builds and I have a quandry, so I'm tossing it out to y'allz for feedback. So obviously 1st Edition AD&D had it's issues. As much as we loved it, we also hated it. The concept of THAC0 never sat well (why does armour stop you from getting hit?) and the balance issues around race (elves can only go to level 10 because they are too flightly to progress beyond that level...errr what?), but one of the biggest problems we always had and hated was how magic was dealt with. I loved the concept of magic-users. But I very quickly stopped playing them because the system just hosed them so hard. Memorising spells was ok as a concept, but the number of spells were so limited that you either blew your spells in the first 30 minutes of the game and sat around playing a boat anchor around the team's neck or you saved them for "that big boss" and never ended up casting half your spells. However it went, you were never good for magical weight. Your HP was so low and you had that 8 or 9 AC. You were limited to dagger, dart, and staff. If you were in dagger range you were dead. You had no armour and no hp. 1v1 with a kobold and you were cooling meat. Staff was a little better but one guy with an actual sword (and the chance that he could actually use it) left you as...cooling meat. So you were stuck in the back of the party hiding behind a rock tossing in darts. 1d2. WOOHOO! Same damage as a punch...except you can't hit anything because your THAC0 is so bad. As a package you were useless. You couldn't do anything in normal combat and your spells were so limited in number that you never had a chance to use them. Which brings me to the actual point of all of this: One of the house rule changes we made was to throw out the casting time for spells. Casters were already so hampered with the number of spells that it seemed overly punitive to have a spell take an entire minute to cast when a combat segment (the rough equivalent of a phase) was 6s. An entire round of combat (10 segments) to cast a spell? If you used casting times there would be many times when you would begin casting but by the time your spell was ready to fire the target was already dead. Lets not even consider spells that required careful aiming (lightning bolt, stinking cloud, fireball, web) to avoid impacting your party or to maximise your effects. And take damage at any time and your spell was interrupted. So even if everything went your way and everyone stood in the exact spot you wanted them to, you still had to avoid damage for an entire minute (and remember you have an AC of 8 so Helen Keller could hit you). One of the big reasons I wanted to convert this is because AD&D sucked as a system. But I wasn't sure how much to change things so I tried to convert the spells pretty much as directly as possible for a baseline. But it doesn't make sense to keep the aspects that made it suck (like casting time). So my conversion allows casters to cast as many spells as they want to (so pretty standard Fantasy Hero) and everything is powered by an Mana Pool END Reserve. The Mana Pool can only be refilled through Meditation (the analogue to memorising your spells every night). All spells cost Mana and I'm figuring that the average caster is going to have 75 - 100 mana in their pool. WIth an average of 3 END per spell we are talking about somewhere in the neightbourhood of 25 spells a day. Which would max (with half/full phase activation times) would be 12 turns @ SPD 2. That seems pretty reasonable. We all know combats for the night are going to take more than 12 turns so they would still have to husband spells (and I can lessen the armour/weapon restrictions so that they would actually have the option of engaging in combat to fill in the gaps). But this brings me back to Casting Time. Cause Light Wounds takes 30s to cast. It's built as a 1/2d6K, 10 AP. Should that REALLY take 2.5 turns to cast? I'm thinking that normal effect combat spells (those roughly equivalent to weapon damage, 4 or less DCs) should be Full Phase (note, everyone is going to basically be SPD 2 with an occasional SPD 3). Large effect combat spells (either 5 - 7 DCs or particularly devious effects) should be Extra Phase (for SPD 2, extra Phase is a Full Turn, but keep them Extra Phase just in case we do get a SPD 3?). Huge effect combat spells (8+ DCs or disgustingly effective effects) should be Full Turn, but how do I make the distinction between Extra Phase and Full Turn for a SPD 2 guy? Do I instead go 3 Phases? For out of combat spells I'm perfectly happy with 1 minute casting, 5 minute casting times, etc since most of those are kind of ritualistic anyway. But I'm concerned with the casting times for combat spells (and what about heals?). I've only done cleric spells so far and druids are next so the combat spells are fairly limited in number, so it isn't too onerous right now to make changes to casting times, but i definitely need to work this out before I get to magic-user spells. So, heroes, what do you think? Small combat spells = Full Phase, large combat spells = 2 Phases, and huge combat spells = 3 Phases? Obviously I can make adjustments after play-testing but if I can get a little closer to the ideal before then it will make tweaking easier. Check back often, since I'll be asking for lots of advice as I go through this! -r

6th, of course.

I'll definitely drop you a note. Other than HD, everything is in Word. I briefly considered PageMaker (or InDesign as they call it now), but I needed something more typing than designing. I'm trying to go through while I work and come through with some kind of design brief so that everyone is on the same page. I'm trying to stick pretty closely to the writer's guidelines, and one of the biggest problems I'm seeing is inconsistency. I should be finishing up the last of the cleric spells today (or early tomorrow) and I can send them over to you then to take a look at.

Yeah, I figured.

My bad. I wasn't clear, I meant inside the build. 2) Cause Critical Wounds: Blast 4d6 (20 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Minute, -1 1/2), No Range (-1/2), Incantations (-1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Requires A Roll (Magic Skill, -1; -1/4) 4) Cure Critical Wounds: Healing BODY/STUN 4d6, Usable By Other (+1/4), Grantor pays the END whenever the power is used, Recipient must be within Limited Range of the Grantor for power to be granted, Reduced Endurance (1/2 END; +1/4) (60 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Minute, -1 1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Requires A Roll (Magic Skill, -3; -1/4) Two spells and on one Incantations is first, then Gestures. On the second Gestures is first, then Incantations. And yes, I know how ridiculous this is.

Before you roll your eyes hard enough to sprain something, I know I am being ridiculous. HOWEVER, doing all these conversions it would be nice if there was a way to sort modifiers (probably alphabetically) so all the Advantages would appear in alphabetical order and then the Limitations. I'm finding that I don't always choose the common modifiers in the same order so sometimes I have Gestures listed first and sometimes it is Incantations. I can go through each one and remove them all and rebuild the powers paying attention to the order I select them, but that's a pain in the butt. I know it has no real effect on anything other than my narrow OCD butt, but there it is. Feel free to tell me I'm ridiculous and move on about your day.

It's mostly all in the title. I'm running a bunch of 1st Edition AD&D ports for GenCon this year. Instead of doing it piecemeal and not having what I need, I've decided to go to the extra effort and convert all the spells into Hero (eventual goal is to upload everything to the library so everyone can have it). My goal is to have a master spellbook with the descriptions and particulars of each spell (that will probably also contain the Hero build) and a Prefab for HD. I'm going to have one prefab for Cleric Spells, one for Druid Spells, and one for Magic-Users. I'm skipping Illusionists because no one ever liked them anyway. My plan is to provide each spellcasting character with their own physical copy of their personal spellbook with all of the spells they know. I believe I'm also planning on having an export format for JUST their spells so that they have a copy of the Hero builds for their character sheet. So each player would receive a bound/stapled physical copy of a spellbook that may/may not include the Hero builds of all of their spells. They will get their character sheet that will have a Custom Power called Spellbook that costs as much as the spells they have. They will also get an extra sheet (or two) called Spellbook that will be an export format that includes nothing but their spells. So if anyone has/would like to also help with an Export Format I wouldn't turn away help (there is probably one in the Vault, but I haven't spent too much time digging around in there just because I'm not to that point yet). I haven't played with Export Formats in (quite literally) years and I'm rusty. I can do it but it will be slow going for a while. I'd also like to have some kind of fancy cover for each caster, but that's if I find the time or find someone to mock something up for me (or I can find something to steal). I'm rapidly closing in on the point that I'll be done with the Cleric Spells (I just started 5th level today and there are only 7 levels of spells) and I could use another set of eyes to compare the HD builds to the descriptions/details in the master list. I'd also the builds looked at, to ensure I haven't neglected an AoE or a Time Limit or something (or miscalculated the Magic Skill modifier). Any helpers would get a mention in the file and my eternal gratitude. Obviously we have some time (since GenCon is in August), but the sooner I get this done the sooner I can move on to other things. So, what I'm looking for is a few people willing to read through some spell descriptions (and find typos and spots where I neglected to remove reference to Levels, etc) and compare them to an HD file (so you will need HD), and while you are proofreading double check the builds and let me know if I have missed something or (in some cases) if my build is just whackadoodle and you have an idea of a better/easier way to do it. I'm doing all the heavy lifting but after a while I'm finding that I am missing some things and not everything is consistent in build/methodology. I'm going to go through and proofread them myself again (obviously) but you don't always do a good job proofing your own work. Thanks in advance. -r EDIT: Samples below, first is spellbook, second is HD. Cure Critical Wounds Range: No Range Casting Time: 1 Minute Components: V, S Duration: Instant Magic Skill: -3 College: Necromantic Area of Effect: 1 Creature Mana Cost: 2 Brief: 4d6 Simplified Healing Description: This spell is a very potent version of the Cure Light Wounds spell. Upon laying his or her hand upon a creature, the cleric causes 4d6 points of healing on a wound or other injury damage to the creature's body to be healed. This wound will not affect creatures without corporeal bodies, nor will it cause wounds to creatures not living or those which can be harmed only by iron, silver, and for magical weapons. Cure Critical Wounds: Healing BODY/STUN 4d6, Usable By Other (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (1/2 END; +1/4) (60 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Minute, -1 1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4), Requires A Roll (Magic Skill, -3; -1/4) EDIT EDIT: It might also be helpful to compare the spells to the original AD&D versions. If you don't have a first edition players handbook, I have a PDF I can loan you.

Yep, I figured that this was the case. I know this is an odd build, and that's going to happen trying to shoehorn a mechanic from another game into the framework of Hero. I can always force it by turning off the Modifier Intelligence or even throwing on a Custom Adder and dropping off 20 points (or even editing the text so that 2 DCs appear as 4 DCs. There are plenty of options as a work around, I'm just trying to keep things as kosher as possible since I was planning on posting all of this mess when I was done so no one else EVAAAAAAR has to wrestle with this mess. As common/simple this concept was in AD&D there are things that Hero is not going to be able to model effectively and I think this is just one of those things. I guess I've resigned myself that Protection from Evil is not going to be something you are going to fire off at the sign of any stray goblin. You are going to save it for the DemiLich and in that case you are going to be very happy to drop the 6 END from your Mana Pool. Honestly, when thinking about it that IS a pretty huge effect you are getting so it probably should cost some END. Thanks for putting up with my tom foolery.

If anyone has the entire Shadowrun Hero book as a single file I would love a copy. That site seems to have no owner (at least the emails get kicked back) and many of the files appear to be corrupted.

Reduced Endurance is not available, HD tells me that "Reduced Endurance cannot be applied to an ability with the Costs END Limitation." EDIT: Which makes kind of sense since one of the options for Reduced Endurance is "Costs 0 END" so you could (in theory) end up with "Costs Endurance" and "Costs 0 Endurance" on the same power. I seem to recall running across this a thousand years ago and don't recall what ever came of it (or I'm just smoking the good stuff and this never came up before).