Steve

Re: The First Hurdle: Creating a *gulp* Magic System I agree with KS on this. Forget about the rules for a few minutes and figure out what feel you are going for. Then once you have that mental framework in mind, take a look at the Hero System main book (with Fantasy Hero adding more options to your tookit) and see how you can use them to make magic work as you want it to work. I would suggest posting that list to this thread or making a new thread for it, maybe broken down by spellcaster types, and then ask for commentary on how to accomplish it. Don't do it with an eye on rules, just go for a general description of effect. Then it's just a matter of reasoning backwards from effect to get a system that works within Hero.

Re: The First Hurdle: Creating a *gulp* Magic System

Re: The First Hurdle: Creating a *gulp* Magic System Well, one thing you can try to show this would be to require Wizard spells to have a Requires Skill Roll Limitation in addition to all others, but Sorcerers don't have this Limitation. It makes their spells a little more expensive. You could also employ different magic systems for each caster type. Maybe Wizards use individual spells bought by a spell skill system (see Fantasy Hero pg 261), and Sorcerers use something like the Chaos Blades idea (Fantasy Hero pg 262). There is no requirement that every type of caster use the exact same system, unless you prefer uniformity. You can do arcane magic and faith-based magic by as simple a change as the name of the skill roll required: "Faith" instead of magic. I really think you're trying to drag too many of D&D's metagaming concepts into Hero, but it's your campaign. It can really be satisifying to strike out and craft your own magic system for your world from the ground up.

Re: [Character] White Phoenix - Ninja Hero/Teen Champions I was wondering when you'd notice this thread. I was actually thinking about doing a thread on the Other Genres board to populate the King of the Streetfighting Warriors world after I get done with some other projects I'm working on. Another option I was thinking about with the original version of White Phoenix was to give her the ability to Summon other characters from the Streetfighting Warriors universe and call it something like Here Comes A New Challenger. By giving it an Activation Roll and a Side Effect, I could have Friendly characters show up when the roll succeeds, but fail the roll and the character that showed up would be an Antagonistic one, and would want to fight Qi Yin instead.

Re: A supernatural hot spot

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel It sounds like it would be staffed by Belldandy and Kasumi Tendo.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From a recent game. The characters came across a mime, complete with the face paint look, costume and everything. The kicker is that it's actually a curse, but one that you can get rid of by passing it along by touching someone else. Needless to say, it would be a really bad thing to have happen to a spellcaster. The dwarf in the party, a surly warrior type got the touch. One comment stuck with me: "Dude, you got mimed." The player who was now playing a dwarf mime, who's a really good sport about such things, said nothing but promptly flashed the other player a rude hand gesture.

Re: [Character] White Phoenix - Ninja Hero/Teen Champions Yeah, I've read that comic, too. A shame it's not being updated very often. I've attached the .hdc file to my original post.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel It could also be weird if there is a 13th floor button, but it only shows up at night or maybe even only at midnight, if a character gets in the elevator at that time. The rest of the time, it's not there.

Re: A supernatural hot spot I guess another way to do it would be to populate the house with one or more spots of Extra-Dimensional Movement (from Spirit World) to act as gates (weak spots in the dimensional barrier). Give them a very low Activation Roll (or probably better, No Conscious Control), Immobile Focus, and Extra Time between openings occurring, and that would also eliminate the need for a Summon power. By using Aid and Suppress or Drain, you could also model how friendly/unfriendly a place is to supernatural presences. A spooky old house would have an Aid, but a high-tech scientific laboratory would work as a Suppress or Drain, maybe also a Change Environment as well. I could imagine a character with spirit-sensing powers would get quite a tingle in a place with an Aid and Change Environment both running.

Re: A supernatural hot spot Hmmm, except it doesn't quite replicate the feel of a place that could be spiritually quiet for years or decades and then something triggers a haunting, even as innocuous as moving a book. The Change Environment idea is an interesting one. No Conscious Control is a Limitation I should have mentioned, since the house or whatever is not consciously bringing spirits over. A really spooky place could also act as an Aid to ghostly powers or maybe a PC with necromantic abilities. With a spirit Summon, an Aid to ghostly powers, and a Change Environment to make the place feel creepy, it could make quite a haunted house.

This idea was suggested to me by a recent episode of Supernatural. An instance of supernatural activity in the main characters' old house caused it to become a magnet for other supernatural entities to come and set up residence. There are stories of buildings and places which seem to be "hot spots" for supernatural activity, even after cleansed of whatever is currently there by ghost hunter types. In thinking about how to model this, Summon seems to be the ideal power, with Trigger to show that it can happen on its own or due to some cause. Maybe an old house isn't currently being haunted, but if someone spills some blood in it, even by just cutting themselves by accident in the kitchen, or they move a book in the library, or even have it blessed by a priest (Amityville Horror anyone?), it awakens something and a ghost appears, or maybe more than one. Built with such Limitations as Antagonistic, Strong-Willed, Extra Time, an Immobile, Obvious Accessible Focus, and maybe Arrives Under Own Power, it could make for a wild place. I'm not sure how to model the Summon power to allow for varying power levels of spooks to show up. Maybe one triggering of the Summon calls up a weak spook, but the next time it is triggered, it calls up a more nasty one.

In the James Hogan novel Thrice Upon A Time and the Dennis Quaid movie Frequency, there is a plot device that allows messages to be sent into the past. I'm wondering which is the better way to model it: to take an Enhanced sense like Radio Perception/Transmission and give it the Dimensional Adder, or does it need the Transdimensional Advantage instead? I'm thinking that it just needs the Dimensional Adder, but I was curious as to what others might feel.

Re: [Character] White Phoenix - Adult Version Thank you. I was just surprised that no one had any suggestions or noticed anything missing in the build.

Re: [Character] White Phoenix - Adult Version Ouch. That stings a bit. Oh well.

Re: [Character] White Phoenix - Adult Version Hmm, not a single comment from anyone. Was it too weird a concept?

When playing in a Dark Champions campaign, where have you had your most memorable battles? Shooting it out with a mafia hood in a dingy hotel room? Fighting an enemy military unit in the midst of a bombed out cityscape? Jumping from rooftop to rooftop as you chase a costumed criminal? What made this battle so memorable?

Re: Happy Thanksgiving! Thia, I am certain you will add new energy to the discussions going on around the boards, as well as starting up others. I have enjoyed reading your postings, and I look forward to seeing you branch out beyond the Fantasy Hero board to the other genres available. And a Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Heroes!

Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO Fantasy Hero gives a large number of options for designing a magic system from the ground up, based on how you (as GM) want magic to work, and reasons why you might use one option over another as well as advantages and drawbacks. And once you've digested how to do a magic system, the example spell systems a little later on in the book show how to put it into practice. Several of them are really quite clever.

Re: Let's talk about Combat Luck

Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO Well, it all depends on the magic system used actually, since those are real points, and one campaign's version of real points is not the same as anothers. Those 30 points represent 1/5 of a 150 point character though. It's a major part of their concept. You might want to take a look through the magic systems chapter on page 220 and the example systems on 261 of Fantasy Hero to see how those thirty points can be spent.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel Goth Girl Pale skinned and wearing black clothes that show off a nice figure, only going out at night from her room, she keeps to herself. Occasionally, strange words in an unknown language can be heard coming from her room. Are they chants? Why is she never seen during the daylight? She never seems to have trouble paying her hotel bills (always to the night manager), so where does she get the money from? Is she a prostitute from some Eastern European country? Is she a witch?

Re: Fixin' what's broken - switching from d20 to HERO The good thing about starting with lower point value characters (such as 50+50 or 75+75) is that it gives you a feel for the system and its possibilities without being as overwhelming as coming up with a 200+150 superhero can be. Once the basics are grasped by a player, how CV is determined by DEX, how defenses and attack powers work, etc, I've seen the light go on in their eyes, and this same player can go on to create some really interesting concepts using the points available to them, however many they are given. It's good until then to work with the system using training wheels like packages, since those are just a way of saying "Using Hero, this is what a typical warrior (wizard, thief, etc) should have in characteristics or know how to do. Experience can then be used to modify that initial somewhat vanilla package to go off into areas that round out the character. Example: the character starts off simply, taking the Elf racial package and the Light Warrior package (26 points + 82 points) for 108 points. The remaining 42 points on a 150 point character can then be used to customize a bit, adding some to characteristics and maybe picking up some more skills or maybe a talent or two. The character is done in a relatively short amount of time than if someone just tried to spend 150 points cold. Later on, maybe the character starts branching out from being a warrior and starts taking Interaction skills, boosting PRE, acquiring Contacts, etc. This character is becoming a fighting diplomat. Or maybe the character starts studying a martial art like kung fu, picking up maneuvers from the party's monk or from an NPC teacher. It's a kung fu elf now. But this sort of growth is done more organically and gradually than a level and class-based system does it. I find this abilitiy of Hero to be one of its more satisfying aspects as far as character growth and change goes.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel The woman from Stepford In her late 20s to early 30s, she dresses well but somewhat conservatively, with a hint of a 50s era TV show woman. She has no children or husband and only says she is a widow if asked about her family. She smiles a lot, but there is such a plastic perfection to her expression and mannerisms that it makes her seem like a robot. The maids don't bother cleaning her room, since she takes care of it all herself. Very warm and friendly, but there is a hint of something darker glinting in her eyes when the characters look away, only noticed in their peripheral vision. No matter how fast they snap back to look at her, she is once again appearing like the perfect woman. Cool, my 400th post.