Earen

Re: Alternative to Aid?

Re: RSR. Can you think of a different way? I require RSR for most of my magic systems ... because I do think it is very appropriate to the genre. What my players put to good use is the Time Chart rule in FREd pg. 28 ... which gives you +1 for each step down the time chart. So when you absolutely need that 3d6 RKA to go off ... you tell the warrior to hold his ground dammit and give me time to do this right! And then cross your fingers ...

Re: Escaping HTH Combat You're quite welcome ... though my FH combats seem rife with Held Actions, at least on the PCs part. On the NPCs part ... well ... they've mostly been fighting animal intelligence or low-human intelligence creatures ... so Held Actions haven't been too prevalent there. Basically, the way I read it though is that if the PC seemingly ignores someone in combat (running right by them or running away from them seem to me to be roughly the same) then they operate at ½ DCV versus that opponent.

Re: Escaping HTH Combat Optional Combat Rules - Ignoring Opponents FH pg. 157

Re: Real Life vs Game Life I actually just had this same experience. I had spent considerable time building a game world and putting together characters (since I am GMing three people new to Hero Games ... one of which is new to tabletop RPGs as well) to be back at the starting point almost. One of the players (with lots of RP experience and personally a decent roleplayer) decided to play an character that is "very emotional." What I didn't understand is what he thought of as "very emotional" meant "emotionally unstable" to me. The party just got done investigating a recently uncovered undead tomb (plug for Bob Pennington ... great adventure BTW) and the previously mentioned unstable character sets up camp at a safe distance and assigns the priest (whose never slept on the ground let alone in the country) and an acolyte emissary from the local temple (played as about 14 and just as inept in the ways of the outdoors as the priest) to guard duty. Well ... the priest and the acolyte bungle the guard duty ... as some may have expected ... and many others wouldn't have been surprised about. Nothing untoward happens to the party ... but the unstable character drags the acolyte out of bed ... stands him up and cracks him one across the jaw to wake him up ... yelling about "falling asleep at his post." As the rest of the party comes together and assumes that the combat muppet has become possessed by the remaining energies in the tomb ... the unstable one takes them all on and proceeds to take the acolyte's horse as "punishment." Well ... things slowly worked themselves out right then. But the unstable member of the party had made an enemy of the priesthood (as well as giving them evidence that he was possessed). After he gets back to town he proceeds to make an enemy of the local constabulary's Captain ... also a member of the local nobility. After all this the player complained to me when the priesthood came after him wanting to check him for signs of possession and the city guard turned a blind eye to his incarceration. Result ... we decided to scrap the first set of characters as "learning the system" and are going to be playing with a brand new party soon ... a band of travelling entertainers. The "unstable" one will be getting a character with a very happy childhood and an animal Follower to snuggle with at night

I purchased the HSB one and have been very happy with it since it allows me to print out character sheets for the night's adventure that I can mark up and doodle on as opposed to the book itself

But as a guideline for what the upper end of actual RL human strength is, we figured it was a pretty good benchmark. No, it's not 100% accurate ... but if you want that then you'd have to measure lifting strength vs. squatting strength vs. benching strength vs. how effectively one could use their strength in combat vs. ... ad nauseam. Also, as far as "just getting a weight off the ground" ... I take the approach that was mentioned earlier of "lifting it and able to carry it a few steps." Which, in my opinion, would roughly equate to lifting it over your head and holding for three seconds. And anyway ... I'm happy with it because it got my player who's being rules nitpicky to calm down

My gaming group had this discussion the other night. The thing one of us was getting caught up on was my description of a 10 characteristic being "normal" and a 20 characteristic being "legendary," i.e. songs sung about that person for generations if not longer. His character has an 18 STR, which according to the normal STR chart can lift 300kg. He didn't think that was that phenomenal ... until we looked up the Olympic world records for weightlifting and found that the current world record in the highest weight class is 260kg. So basically, his 18 STR is legendary ... by our modern sense of the term. I used to think that the geometric progression of STR was great for superheroic games, but bad for heroic ... but looking at those Olympic records changed my mind. As far as encumbrance goes, I changed it so that one could use one's Casual STR with no penalty ... so long as everything is evenly distributed on the body, armor and backpack-wise. Beyond 50% of one's STR, they start taking penalties at the normal rate. If it gets abusive, I'll change it.

I decided early on, being a fan of Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" series, that I wanted a type of "magic is a natural resource" system. Every living thing gathers manna ... but whether or not it can put it to use is a different story. This is reflected in any caster needing to not only buy a MPP (with required limitations based on the type of magic) but an END Reserve from which all their spells are powered. This helps ameliorate the "put a bazillion limitations on the MPP to get it cheap" strategy ... and also prevents the "withered old mage who is a better cross-country runner than the physically-fit warrior." Or at least, that's my hope ... I just have Gestures, Incantations, Requires a Skill Roll, and Focus required. Though also, due to the nature of magic in my campaign ... any power that typically doesn't cost END is required to do so. I'm including the Spell Limitation from FH as well. But this opens up all sorts of magic battles with END Transfers (stealing someone's magic from them) and END Reserve REC Suppress (disrupting the local flow of manna), etc. At least ... those are my ideas for the bad guys Oh ... I also didn't do the "can't wear metal armor thing" and opted that any spell that uses Gestures takes a type of encumbrance penalty depending on the restrictiveness of the armor worn. Though, I think due to the suggestion above ... I'll just go straight with encumbrance penalties and call it good

I'm making all magic-wielding characters in my campaign use a Multipower for their spells and power them from an END reserve. This gives them the ability to buy decent-powered spells for 1 to 3 points each ... but limits them from getting spells that are too powerful because they have to spend the points on the Multipower reserve and the END reserve first. I haven't done a lot of playtesting yet ... but I'm interested to see how it'll turn out.

Not as much as they would like something like, "He had a tattoo of an anchor on each forearm." I would say that many people know right off the bat who I'm talking about in that quote. Whereas if I said, "I'm thinking about an elf ... guess which one," I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to figure it out without more clues.

p211 of FREd ... titled "The Basic Law Of Disadvantages" ... has come in handy many, many times.

I also tend to lean away from using DF for all situations. I use the "police lineup" test. Say character X is a member of race Y. If X committed a murder and witness Z saw it ... how significant would it be if Z said, "Well ... he was a Y." If that doesn't significantly narrow the field of "suspects" ... then it's not Distinctive Features. So, if they said, "He's an elf." But in the campaign setting there's 20% elves ... then that doesn't really narrow the playing field. But if he said, "He's an elf with a tattoo of a tree covering the entire front of his torso." Now that's distinctive ... Of course ... if they said, "He's an elf." And in the entire town of 5,000 there's two elves. Well, that's distinctive too ...

I like them too ... though I like the Hobgoblin best. Not sure why ... because he's in a pose that seems to give off more intelligence than most would ascribe to a hobgoblin. I guess it just catches my eye ... whereas the others are kinda ... "yeah, that makes sense."

Ahhhhh ... make it stop ... make it stop!!! I thought I escaped that when I moved out?!? Now I'll have to go back and hack up my little sister into itty-bitty pieces for watching that bloody show over and over and over and over and over ...

Curses ... that's what I thought the answer would be. Now I have three books I want to buy ... which is both good and bad, I guess

I have an old edition Hero Bestiary (copyright date 1992 ... Stock Number 507). How different is the current Hero Bestiary from the one I have? Did they just update the monster/animal character sheets for FREd? Or was it much more of a makeover?

I would have to agree that it depends also ... depends on what is normal for your campaign. I tend to go with 10 in all characteristics for an average mature human. If you take into account the elderly and children ... that's where the 8 stats come in. So yes, in my book, an average mature orc is slightly stronger than an average mature human ... based on MMM.

Unless you're part game designer, I would say the FH genre book is a must-have ... if for no other reason than to make you say, "Gee ... I'm glad they reminded me about that ... I know Player X would have pulled something along those lines." Other than that ... be prepared to invest a lot more up-front time in building at least a few things about the world (available player races, significant NPCs, spells and magic system) and about adventures than maybe you've been used to in the past. But even giving my players a taste of what I have planned for them has met with overwhelming success ... and a desire for more ... even while they wait.

The examples of filthy rich people not being content to just sit at home and to go on adventures in both literature and history are many.

Re: Re: Re: FH Perks I would tend to agree with you ... depending on what exactly the player were trying to get out of the power. Scenario #1: Player wants to be able to summon a servant at any time, subject to the restrictions of the spell (magic roll, gestures, incantations, etc) ... have a contest of wills and then force it to do whatever he asks. Scenario #2: Player wants to be have a "spirit guide" that he summons through a semi-elaborate non-combat ritual that is only useful at certain times of the month. It is used mainly to gain information, but with some good roleplaying could convince his spirit guide to invisibly scout the lair of the Evil Lord and supply exact guard placements ... or perhaps even soften up the defenses at a crucial moment. #1 is obviously a case for Summon. #2 could be simulated with Summon with appropriate limitations, but the idea here is that a Contact is something that is almost entirely in the control of the GM. The GM has final ruling if the Contact is going to help or not. A Summon is more in control of the player ... with some limitations on whether or not he can get it to work. To me ... Scenario #2 is what they were talking about in FH. Now, as to a player who reads that and thinks they can get a cheap Summon ... in my games, he'd have a rude awakening

Re: Map Thanks a bunch for the adventure ... it'll probably be my campaign's first run (the players are chomping at the bit for an adventure and I've been working on background ) I'll post how it goes ... I was also meaning to ask what you used to generate the map ... looked like AutoRealm at first glance ... but what's this CC2 thing? Thanks in advance ...

Re: Accounting This sounds like a great system ... I'll probably use it for my campaign. I was dreading making my players keep track of everything. (We already did that for ShadowRun and it gets into lots of little debates.)

Re: Perk: Noble Titles My original idea was to allow it with the caveat that the character's lands were X and the benefits would only work in his own lands ... then let all the adventuring take place in Y. But let's take a look at these point-by-point and see how we can have fun with them ... that's what GMing is about right? The first thing to do is to not let him play ... I had two powergamers of this sort in my original FH campaign. (Examples included the character who wanted "Distinctive Features: No eyelids" ... as a negative points version of the Lightsleep talent as well as extra Fear PRE attacks, etc ... until I told him that he'd be blind. Or the character that wanted the wild magic talent of a spell that could kill pretty much anyone or anything in the campaign, but required 5 hours of preparation in total darkness, 8 specially-prepared black candles and could only be done on the new moon ... until I told him that if he lit the candles, it wouldn't be total darkness anymore ... and that a 5 hour ritual didn't sound like "wild magic" to me. But I digress ...) It was so bad that the campaign never really got off the ground ... each session devolved into arguing some point or another. Getting rid of problem players is one of the talents of good GMing. But let's see if we can devise ways to "encourage" this one to go his own way... His Commoner: "You have a whole army to do that for you ... and to protect me ... I'm not going to fight for you, I work your land!" Serfs in feudal times got taken fairly good care of actually ... much better than is typically depicted in movies. They got a plot of land to work ... a house to live in ... and food to eat. Oh, and they had an army to protect them from bandits and such. And if things got really bad during a war ... they could go stay at the castle until it blew over. Someone else's commoner: "'Oo the 'ell are you to order me around? I'm no knight you daft bugger! And even if you wuz to makes me one on the spot I sure as 'ell wouldn't run off to fight for a bloke 'oo can't tell the difference between a serf and a knight! Daft noble-borns ... always ordering you around (mutter mutter as he wanders off)" (Peals of laughter as if you were in the worst dive in town and you just blushed because the barmaid showed a little cleavage.) (Knights arrest the "noble" in question ...) "Unhand me at once you vile knave! Don't you realize who I am? I am Baron Percy VIII!" "Yes, your honor, we realize that. Duke Charles III ordered you placed into the stockade for a week for sending the serfs of Baron Timothy I, Baron Leopold III, and Baron Stephen IV into war without their leige-lords' permission ... and this I don't mind telling you for free ... that you sent them into battle against a lord that the good Duke was secretly supporting. So I doubt that you'll be released promptly ... it's the clouds this time of year, you know, hard to tell if it's been a week or a fortnight if you can't see the sun!" And as a historical note ... there is always someone higher up the food chain. In the scenario above, if the Barons Percy, Timothy, Leopold and Stephen are the only vassals of the good Duke Charles ... well ... since it's obvious that Percy has managed to upset the other three vassals ... I seriously doubt that Percy's punishment would end at the stockade. Most likely, the other three Barons would require remuneration for the serfs they lost in the war that Percy ordered them to fight. So ... now Baron Percy is a Baron without lands, or serfs, or income from taxes ... and everywhere he goes he's laughed at ... "Baron Percy the Daft" they whisper as he walks by in his clothes that are in tatters because he can't afford any new ... But I hope you get the point ... Basically, what it boils down to is that you're the GM. As the saying goes, "It's your world." You run the world ... he doesn't. And if he tries to bully you into things (which it sounds like he's doing) then don't be afraid to use the entire world you've created to bully back. You run the game world ... he doesn't. He can have anything he wants for a character ... and you can spend the first few game session showing him the error of his ways. Some of your other players may applaud you for it...

Re: FH Perks Actually, it states on page 98 of FH in the very first paragraph of the "Spirit Contacts" section (emphasis added): To me, this would imply that a character could attempt to persuade their "Contact" to actually perform Summon-like tasks for them. I would say that yes, this would be worth at least twice the normal points. This one I think you're just reading too much into a table that is specifically called out in the preceding text as "suggested ... values for positions based on Earth cultures" (once again, my emphasis ... page 99 of FH). You are correct, the title is not what the character is paying for, but the resources that go with that title. If, in your campaign, a duke gets absolutely nothing but a fancy name for their letterhead that everyone knows is a sham ... then it's worth 0 points. If, on the other hand, a duke is treated as the right hand of the royalty and is welcomed at any table, high or low, in a vast empire that spans half the globe ... then it should be worth more than just the 8 points listed in the table.