phydaux

Frankenstein's Monster is a flesh golom. He's a construct.

I run in the official Champions Universe. It's rich, well documented, plenty of fully fleshed out villians, agencies, and NPC heroes. One thing, though, is I always have the local Campaign City be one that HASN'T been written up in any source book. That way I can say what the "local color" is.

Quasar - Work with the appropriate federal, state, and local narcotics authorities to secure the crime scene, and ensure the evidence is properly collected. Shadowhunter - Lean on the various dealers & organized crime figures to ensure that no additional samples made it out of the lab. Track them down if they did, break enough bones to discourage any future "entrepreneurs." Mystica - "Do not bother Mysica with such trifles. These liquids and powders are nothing, and the weak people who use them are only a harm to their own bodies. The Eldritch Horrors are humanity's true threat. They threaten to enslave us all, body and soul."

That is the entire theme of The Walking Dead - We're surrounded by zombies, but it's the PEOPLE who are the monsters (Negan, the Governor, the crowd at Sanctuary, etc..).

Skunk Ape, aka Swamp Sasquatch

Hmmm.... Just realized that I didn't really answer your question. The short answer is I like Orks. I see then as a noble and tragic race. Dwarves can live for hundreds of years, and Elves for thousands. This allows then to build great and advanced civilizations. Even humans, with their relatively shorter life spans, can build great civilizations. Orks have very short life spans. They basically live long enough to reproduce a few times. That means they don't have the life span to build great things, and rarely "take the long view." More importantly, they don't live long enough to become craftsmen at anything. That means that anything they want, they have to take from someone else. I use my spectrum of Goblins - Orks - Ogres. I also use Undead & Demons. I find that for most purposes, that's enough. Rather than Devils I use Fey, both Seelie and Unseelie (although neither are "good") but those are rare (and too much work to DM). Sometimes I'll use specialty monsters like Giants and Elementals.

If you just go by regular "categories" of monsters then it's hard NOT to develop a "full buffet." Now even if you just go by your "standard" fantasy monsters then yes, it can get overwhelming fast: Orks Goblins Hobgoblins Ogers Trolls Gnolls Kobolds Bugbears Owlbears And for each one you've got Warriors, Shamans, Chieftains. That's a bunch. So let's cut out most of those, and just pick one - Orks Assuming you're running a 150+25 campaign then Ork Warriors should be about 25 points less than the PCs. Ork Shamans are the same points cost as the PCs (Basic Ork Warrior plus a 20 point spell multipower with a couple of slots), and the Chieftains are the same cost as the PCs (assuming 6th, Basic Ork Warrior plus +1 SPD, +1 each OCV/DCV, +3 each PD/ED). All Orks get leather armor and simple swords. Notice, you really only made one monster character sheet, and just made slight, very specific modifications to it twice. Now we get really sneaky. You can pick either Trolls or Ogres. I prefer Ogres myself, but Trolls are more "Tolkien" if that's what you're going for. Either way, thay are the "Big Cousins" of Orks. These should be the same cost as the PCs. Use the Ork Chieftain character sheet. Give him chainmail & a two-handed weapon if you want him to hit hard, or Bastard Sword & Shield if you want him to not hit as hard but be harder to hit. Then we're going to add "Lesser Orks," or Goblins if you prefer. For a Goblin Warrior take a Basic Ork Warrior and subtract 1 SPD, 1 OCV & DCV, and 2 each PD & ED. A Goblin Shaman is a Basic Goblin plus the same magic as an Ork Shaman. A Goblin Chieftain is the same character sheet as a Basic Ork Warrior. Goblins have simple swords and cloth armor. And there you go. You made one character sheet, modified it slightly & specifically a few times, and you've got a whole spectrum of "Monsters" to populate your dungeons. Go and do the same thing for "Undead" and "Demons" and your world is nearly done.

We need the standard FYB attacks - Flash, Entangle, AOE, & NND. Pie To The Face is a simple Flash vs Sight. Entangle, with the Advantage Vs DEX not STR (+1). The special effect is a Banana Peel. Seltzer Spray To The Face is an NND (No damage if you have self contained breathing). AOE... I got nothing.

Quasar - He would follow up with Primus and the local police, but street crimes really aren't his area of expertise. Shadowhunter - He would hit up all his contacts - Local beat cops, organized crime contacts, dealers in stolen items. Street crimes ARE his area of expertise. Mystica - "Book? What kind of book? Tom Sawyer book, or SPELL book? Why are you keeping spell book? Where do you get? What have you been doing with arcane spell book? Does book have names of demons? Why are you summoning demons in MY CITY?!?! You work for DEMON? Are you Morbane? ANATHEMA! Now feel the wrath of.... Wait, is Tom Sawyer book? Why you bother me over Tom Sawyer book? You lost book, but still have soul. Be happy and stop bothering Mystica."

Try this: It was decent. Could have been much better. The author made some odd creative choices, IMO. Then again, I am highly critical of my fiction.

Gary Gygax, 1980

My PCs never know when this man will show up, and I LOVE it.

Depends on the Age. A man in green tights with a yellow spike on his helmet and his man eating goldfish doesn't work in the Iron Age, but it perfectly fine in the Silver Age. I don't really like the Silver Age, but God how I hate the Iron Age.

I sometimes think that I have a real advantage having played Champions back in the mid-80s. My regular game group back then noticed early on that you could have two super-heroic PCs built on the same number of points, and one of them could punch out main battle tanks and laugh off Hellfire missiles, and the other one would have a much lower relative power level. Think Iron Man vs Daredevil. In a Super Hero game that's not that much of an issue, but it tends to be much more pronounced in Fantasy Hero. If the GM expects every PC to have Deadly Blow and Combat Luck, and one PC has neither, that PC isn't going to last long. Or if the GM expects that no one will have Deadly Blow or Combat Luck, and one PC shows up with both, plus chain mail and a two-handed battle axe, then that one PC is going to break the game for everyone else. I find that to have a really effective fantasy level campaign I have to issue very specific campaign guidelines for PC construction. Want to get fancy and creative? No problem in a 400-point Champions campaign. In a 175-point you have to spoon feed guidelines to the PCs or everything gets all pear shaped really fast. "Four PCs. In relative power terms, are they four Iron Men, or four Daredevils? Are eight Kobolds a good challenge, or is that too easy? What about four Orks? Two Trolls? Will the munchkin with Deadly Blow and Combat Luck tear through them, leaving the other PCs behind? Do I need to give the monsters Deadly Blow and Combat Luck too? Or will that lead to a Total Party Kill?"

Yes, but some players (one I can think of is a prolific thread starter in the Fantasy Hero forum) can't get past the "start weak, get powerful, then get VERY powerful" trope ingrained into that other poly-dice game. He doesn't want to play that poly dice game, he wants to play Hero System, but he ALSO wants 50 XP to produce that huge growth in player power level. It's like when I had a player who had only ever played D&D and he was playing Fantasy Hero for the first time. He said he wanted to play a Monk, so I helped him build a religious martial artist. Later the party ended up on the wrong end of some poison weapons. "Well my character is immune to poison, so I'm OK." "What? Your character isn't immune to poison." "Yes he is. He's a Monk. Monks are immune to poison." "D&D Monks are immune to poison. We're not playing D&D." "So this game doesn't have Monks?" "This game has whatever you want." "Oh. Well, I want to play a Monk, and Monks are immune to poison." Sadly this player was in his 30s and had a college education. Sometimes I weep for the future of our nation....

"A lot of my inspiration came from Brian Sanderson's Mistworld series." A buddy of mine has been trying to YEARS to get me to read Brian Sanderson.

I find it hard to do Zero to Hero in Hero System. I find that XP tends to "flesh out" characters, adding versatility to the abilities they already have rather then adding or greatly expanding on existing abilities.

If I understand your game world, technology works and magic works. But only people who are of the proper blood line can do magic. See, that immediately puts Magistan at a disadvantage. If anyone who goes to school long enough can become an engineer but you have to be born a mage, then Techtopia will out produce Magistan in a single generation. If anyone can become either an engineer or a mage so long as they have the brainpower then the real power is in the schools. Or more specifically in the teachers and the text books. Both nations would guard their schools, professors and libraries very jealously. Each nation would have active measures to destroy the other nation's schools, kill their students, kidnap the professors, and steal the text books. And now we get into the REAL fun of a Cold War campaign - Espionage! Let's see.... Techtopia and Magistan are both trying to win supporters in Balancelandia. One of the ways they do that is to give "scholarships" to the children of prominent Balancelandia families to come and study in their most prestigious universities. EXCEPT Magic or Engineering, or course. You must be a native-born citizen to enroll in those courses. The PCs are students from Balancelandia and are studying in, say, Techtopia. They get approached by spys from Magistan, counter-spys from Techtopia. Oooo, this could get fun.

Also, World of Warcraft has a lot of "arcanepunk" elements to it. It has all the classic fantasy tropes, but it also has gunpowder weapons, blimps, air planes, cannons, helicopters, gyrocopters, hell it has motorcycles. I would suggest that you steal shamelessly from both WoW and GW.

I'll throw out one idea for you, one that you should be well aware of if you play Champions: 3d6 RKA is "rules" "Musket" and "Wand of Lightning Bolt" are pure special effects. So long as "Musket" and "Spell of Lightning Bolt" are both 45 active point OAF RKAs then Techtopia and Magistan will be fine. Each "nation" does the exact same things, they just do them differently. Techtopia has ships suspended under hot air balloons and propelled by blades hooked to a steam engine (which also heats the hot air balloons). The balloons and the steam engine needs the constant attention of a huge team of engineers or the whole thing will fall out of the sky. Magistan has ships with Levitate spells enchanted onto them and propelled by air elementals. The enchantments and the elementals need the constant attention of a large team of sorcerers or the whole thing will fall out of the sky. But both are just vehicles with whatever stats vehicles have. The magic and the steam punk are just hand waving.

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet in the thread, but your setting reminds me very much of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles setting (before Games Workshop, literally, blew up the game world). In the GW setting the Empire of Men lay between the forest kingdoms of the High Elves and the mountain kingdom of the Dwarves. The Dwarves had gunpowder with crude muskets, cannons, and mortars. The Elves had perfected magic better than any other race. The Empire, because they interacted with both kingdoms, borrowed greatly from each. The humans weren't as good at magic as the Elves, not did they craft guns as well as the Dwarves, but they were just good enough at both to be a threat with them.

What are the point levels of the sample characters? Are they suitable to be hand-out PCs for a game run at a Con?

So all the monsters are in the Bestiary?

One of the things I totally miss from my old days playing Role Master is the Critical Hits & Critical Fumbles tables.

A few quick questions regarding Fantasy Hero Complete: Does it contain racial packages for the various fantasy races? Does it contain write ups for various fantasy monsters like Orks, Goblins, Zombies, Skeletons, etc.? Thanks! phy