Brett

Re: Bashing people with chairs, lightpoles, automobiles...

Re: Thoughts on having a multi-racial game...

In real life, there are many reasons to use an object to attack someone rather than your fists: it is more intimidating, probably gives more reach, decreases the chances the attacker will hurt himself, and most importantly, it should do more damage. Without any reference with me, I would say that these are covered somewhere in the rules. Walking menacingly towards someone with a heavy metal pipe could be a Presence attack. There are some optional rules about weapons with reach or combatants with different sized weapons. There are no rules for hurting yourself because it would be dull and burdensome to have to determine if you broke a finger every time you punch a bad guy. What has bothered me, however, is damage. The rules generally say, if I am correct, that an someone attacking with an object can do his damage class in STR or a damage class equal to the object's BODY + DEF, whichever is less. So, what is the point of attacking with objects? The damage will be the same. The rules allude to other advantages, but I have seen no specific rules for these. I was surprised that The Ultimate Brick did not have advanced rules for attacking with cars and buildings. (I sure would feel dumb if it were there and I just overlooked it. I've only skimmed the book.) The obvious advantage is that a melee combatant can pick something up and throw it. Therefore, Bricks can toss boulders at enemies that are flying or out of reach. Also a character may be able to use a sharp object to make normal strength damage into killing damage. It is implied that a Brick can swing a telephone pole or some such object as an Area of Effect attack. However, there are no rules to say how big the object has to be or how much of an area is affected. Furthermore, why does the Brick not have to pay points for such abilities? The Superpowers Database and Ultimate Brick have characters paying for different area of effect, armor piercing, etc... attacks even though the attacks are uses of Strength or Telekinesis combined with objects of opportunity. Getting area of effect, killing damage, and ranged attacks would be worth a strong attacker taking a damage penalty by using a weaker (BODY + DEF) object to attack. But what about a weaker attacker using a rock or a two by four to attack someone? The obvious intent is to do more damage. I was wondering if anybody had any house rules or suggestions on how to deal with these issues? Brett

Re: Thoughts on having a multi-racial game... Also, even if you did not have elves, dwarves, and such, the Humans tend to be broken down into different varieties. Even thought the Turakian Age has many nonhuman races, there are still about eight types or cultures of humans. Brett

Re: Thoughts on having a multi-racial game... There is also the consideration of how NPCs react to the character. Even if the character is just a human in dwarven clothing, the other NPCs still see and react to a dwarf, or an orc, or an elf, etc... Brett

Re: Combat Balance I remember the Effectiveness Rating. It was interesting, but seemed way too involved. I was wondering if anyone had any guidelines for comparing OCV vs DCV, and Damage vs Defense. I guess the two main things to compare are how often in a turn each opponent will likely land a blow and how much damage will be done on average. However, how much of a CV advantage is needed to be a significant benefit? How much defense is enough to defend from an attack? If a 2d6 Killing attack does an average of 7 body, should a challenging opponent have a 7 resistant defense or higher? I have tried to think of the important things to consider between two characters and seem to come up with most of the information on the character sheets. SPD, DEX, CON, BOD, STUN, resistant and non resistant defenses, average and maximum damage from most likely used attacks, Maxumum OCV and DCV, etc... Like people are saying, I guess it is just more of an educated guess. Do other GM's fudge the rolls when things get unbalanced? Brett

Does anyone have suggestions or a simple method of balancing combat encounters in FH? I can do fairly well, but sometimes I make encounters that are just too easy or too hard and requires some fudging on my part to make them work. It may be just an art form. Brett

Re: Combining sources I used shrink pictures and print them out for miniatures like Keith. However, recently I have been buying the plastic D&D Miniatures and using them on a Chessex Battle Mat. I, of course, use Hero books such as FH, FHG, HB, and MMM. I am spoiled by Hero Designer and would be lost without it. I usually draw my own maps and sometimes just make things up as I go. The D&D website has a archive of maps that are helpful. Character and plot ideas come from all sorts of sources such as books, movies, the news, comics, video games, etc... Brett

Re: Harry Potter HERO

Re: Harry Potter HERO

Re: Harry Potter HERO Maybe the penalty should be a negative modifier equal to the school year in which that spell is normally taught. Therefore a spell that in normally taught in the OWL year would have a -5 penalty to cast. Some basic and simple spells like Lumos would probably be learned by most wizarding children before they attend Hogwarts and would have no penalty. Harry was learning Expecto Patronum in his third year, and many were impressed that one of his age could cast that spell. I do not remember if the book stated what year it is normally taught, but I would think it would be in the 5th year or higher.

Re: Mecha Modeling Advice I have never been very interested in vehicles, even though I do have the 5th edition vehicle books. I may be confused about something from this Gundam writeup. Does the "+10 CV" on all the weapons mean + 10 to the combat value of attacks made with this weapon? With a +10 to attack and a -6 to DCV for the size penalty, how could they ever miss each other in combat? Brett

Re: Harry Potter HERO Thank you, This site is much better. I have only had a minute to look at it and was wondering if it has any information about what spells, potions, etc... are taught in which year of school. Brett

Re: Harry Potter HERO Acting rolls please. +4 bonus if predicting a gruesome death for yourself. +2 if you only predict some crippling injury. Brett

Re: Harry Potter HERO Hermione was so bad a Divination that she quit the class. With Keith's system, maybe this could be represented by Disadvantages such as a Physical or Psychological Limitation.

Re: Harry Potter HERO Hello Keith, I like your ideas on how to do Hogwarts Magic. This web site has a list of the names of the spells used in the books and what they do. It also has some spells from the movies and games. http://www.death-curse.com Look under information in the menu and then spells. Here is a direct link to the spells: http://www.death-curse.com/index.php?p=information/spells Brett

Re: Why must humans rule? Speaking of alien races, wouldn't you think that elves would be the least likely to act like humans (going on adventures and fighting wars) since in most settings, they are have extreme life spans or are immortal? It seems that one with so much life ahead of them would be overly cautious. Other elves with too much life behind them may not care about living or have a death wish. Still, the biggest psychological difference between humans and elves in most settings are that elves have an affinity with nature and magic. Brett

Re: Why must humans rule? Much more roleplaying is required to play a truly nonhuman race. As the above posts indicate, most Cat-People are just humans with high DEX, tails, claw, and nightvision. They still act like quirky humans, otherwise, they would sleep through most of the adventure and spend their waking hours lounging about, ignoring everyone, and looking for food or something with which to play. Brett

Re: Why must humans rule? If I remember correctly, in the Earthdawn RPG by FASA, Dwarves were the primary race. In Monte Cook's Diamond Throne setting for his d20 Arcana Unearthed game, Giants came in and freed humans from the slavery of some sort of Dragons/Demons and now rule the land. I had a fantasy setting that I made once where the races were primarily humanoid\animal variants. There was a race that was like anime humans with wild colored hair, eyes, and skin. However, this race was not dominant in the land. Brett

Re: FH Grimoire Index I have not had much use for the index either. I would be satisfied with a standard index with the spell name and page number. If you use a standard index, it may be helpful to note the spell's arcana with an abbreviation by the name. With a standard index, would it be limited to FHG II spells, or would it contain both FHG II and FGH spells? Brett

Re: Magic Skill Levels It is still rather confusing. For example, Taalsalira, the first villain listed in the sections, has a Faith skill of 18- and +4 with Magic which costs 12 points. I would assume that this is +4 on magical attack rolls, but this is not very clear since the Faith skill is her magic skill. Of course, why pay 3 points per +1 when you can improve the single skill for 2 points per +1?

The character Valerius the Harper on FH page 383 has several Specific Magic Skills such as Sorcery and Wizardry. He also has +2 with Magic Skill Rolls for 10 points and +1 with Magic Rolls for 3 points. I think that I previously saw this in the book somewhere, but I cannot find it now. I believe that the +2 Magic Skill Rolls applies to casting the spell while the +1 Magic Rolls applies to attacking (the hit roll) with spells. Unless the character is going to use very few types or schools of spells, wouldn't it be cost effective to buy many 5 point levels rather than buying up each spell? 5 points gets you a +1 on all casting magic rolls, whereas 2 points buys a single skill such as Wizardry only a +1 over the base cost. 4 points spent on individual skills would give 2 skills a +1 and 6 points would give only 3 skills a +1.

I had a campaign setting with a few non-standard Ideas. The player character races were mostly based on animal (Aquatic, Reptile, Feline, Avian, and an Anime-type human variant). No elves or orcs. Magic was also different. There were no spells. Long ago this land was visited (and benignly conquered) by a powerful wizard race. (Actually these were regular humans) This wizard race could wield raw magic, but could not teach their new subjects to do so. What the native races did learn to do was to store magical energy, and then use that energy to provide power to magical items created by the wizard race. About a century or so later, a great war broke out among the various factions of the wizard race and they practically destroyed each other or drove each other from this world. Now, 500 years later, the only magic items available are those that are made from raw magical materials (gems that glow, rocks that provide heat, or leaves that aid healing when infused with magical energy) or more powerful magical items left behind or found in the ruins of the past war. No one can make new magical items. Items with maintenance and repair spell are fairly common (clothing, tools, or weapons that are magically cleaned, repaired, and maintained when infused with magical energy). The more powerful the item, the more rare it is.

Detailed spell components would definitely add to a very role-playing intensive game. However, I was looking for more of a middle ground between spell components being detailed and nonexistent. On some of the spells in the FHG, I wonder if spell components would discourage a player from choosing a particular spell or perhaps not even being a spell caster. For example, Mystic Dart requires a Difficult to Obtain miniature dart made of gold or crystal. If the player could simply buy these at a wizard's shop, each dart should cost about 10 SP. A player might decide that it is more economical in both money and character points to have a STR 13, buy a Very Heavy Bow for 30 SP, then only have to pay 4 CP for each arrow used (also some arrows may be recoverable and can also be found and taken from fallen enemies.) The same character could buy plenty of Bow or Ranged Combat Skill Levels for all the points that it would take to get a Wizardry skill high enough to cast Mystic Dart consistently with it -6 Magic Skill Roll. While it may be easier to hit with the Mystic Dart due to its One Hex Accurate Area of Effect, the target can still dodge the attack or dive for cover. The Mystic Dart also only works on living creatures (although many undead and constructs may not be too bothered by arrows either.)

I like the additional flavor added to spells by requiring expendable foci to cast many spells, but this seems burdensome in ways. The primary problem that I see would be keeping track of the spell components and replacing them. How many rune engraved pebbles does the spellcaster have left? When she runs out, how long does it take to engrave one? This seem like it would lead to a lot of bookkeeping. (On the other hand, I tend to find keeping up with arrows left to be tedious.) Perhaps spell casters should be allowed to have a Spell Components Pouch that they pay a monthly price to maintain. As long as they pay this price and have the pouch in their possession, it is assumed that they have the Foci needed for spells with up to and including Difficult to Obtain Foci. Very Difficult and Extremely Difficult Foci must be maintained separately. Of course, a method must then be determined to calculate the monthly price. Does anyone have any other suggestion on how to handle this situation?