The Souljourner

Re: Throwing a Manhole cover vs a OIF The restriction of no range advantages on hand to hand attack seems silly to me. Then again, I think they should remove the -1/2 hand to hand attack limitation altogether. It's not like anyone every says "man this hand to hand attack is too inefficient" . Yes yes, compare it to strength, don't even go down that road. Personally I think there should be a "blast" power at 5 points per d6 of normal damage, and gets a free advantage either "ranged" or "adds damage from strength". Regardless, the best way to do this is to ignore the rule about no range on hand to hand attacks and just put it on there anyway (custom advantage +1/4). Done. -Nate

Re: New Mythology I don't have anything nearly so detailed for my new FH campaign, but I like what I have so far - I blatantly stole the names from Hebrew, since Hebrew just sounds cool (and I have an Israeli friend who's willing to translate for me). The world is known as Kadur Haaretz. It has one sun, one moon, and countless stars. What may be beyond these things is unknown, and is considered unknowable by most. Kadur Haaretz has three gods - Elyon - God of Light, the Sun, Peace, Love, Justice, and all that is Good. Baal Davar - God of Darkness, the Moon, War, Hate, and all that is Evil (though his worshipers will try to tell you otherwise). Ee'ma Adama - While not a god in the typical sense of the word, she is the spirit of the world, and is the god of the World, Balance, Nature, Weather, Plants, and Animals. There are countless peoples on Kadur Haaretz, and not all of them that worship, worship one of these three gods as such. You might have a tribe who worships the sun, and calls their god Pellor, but it is Elyon who answers their prayers. I like having just one good god, one evil god, and one neutral god... it makes my life a lot easier, but I wanted players to be able to come up with interesting and unique characters that they might want to worship one very specific god (such as D'Lyte, the god of dancing without shoes)... and so I came up with the idea that maybe not everyone agrees on the established gods (gasp!), and might worship ones that don't really exist as a separate entity, though they'd still be able to have powers based on their religion. I don't have a mythology about creation... not sure I really need one just yet... but it is an interesting thing to think about. -Nate

Re: Ran my first FH session... some questions I set the NCM for Speed at 3 instead of 4, because otherwise there's really no reason why everyone wouldn't just get 4. At 10 points (assuming everyone gets 3, which I think is almost mandatory), it's just too beneficial not to. I may consider putting RSR on spells... it seems like spellcasting is a little too good right now (the spellcaster, if he hadn't been one-clubbed, was going to start easily mopping guys up... and with the small amount of END each spell often costs, he wasn't going to have to worry about that restriction much either (until after he got knocked out and woke up with 5 END ) -Nate

Re: Ran my first FH session... some questions Thanks for the responses I guess I'll give them the go ahead for 150 points and see what they come up with. We used hit locations last night and it made battle a lot more interesting, I think. Getting x2 body can really hurt! The wizard was almost one-punched (well, clubbed in the vitals).... we figured out he might want to make some kind of shield spell -Nate

So, I whipped up a few characters for my players so they could get the feel of the game. I made a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard. I couldn't decide what to do for a magic system, so I just made up a multipower with a bunch of ultra slots, and common limitations of gestures, incantations, and Spell. It actually worked out stupidly well. a 45 point multipower with like 8 spells was not too many points at all (22 for the reserve and about 2 points per spell = 38 points). So, am I missing something? Is this not a good way to do it? I know it kinda makes it so that all a wizard's spells are the same active points cost... but other than that, are there drawbacks? How many points do you start PCs off with? I was planning on 100 points +50 points of disadvantages (I don't like a ton of disadvantages... it makes more work for me, and makes PCs come up with too many wacky drawbacks for their characters just to eke out a few more points). But when I was building the characters, I kinda stalled at about 100 points. I was trying not to make the characters too stupidly good... it's really amazing how much you can get out of 100 points when you're not buying many if any powers. What do you suggest for CV limits? Damage limits? it seems with even a moderate amount of points you can easily have people with 10 OCV doing like 4d6 killing. I gave my wizard 20 intelligence because wizards are supposed to be intelligent, but then he complained it didn't help his spellcasting any... which is true, and I don't know how to do it without actually restricting his spellcasting... the only way intelligence could make you better is if there was an int roll to spellcasting, and that just makes spellcasting worse. OK, I guess I'll leave it at that. Thanks in advance for your responses. -Nate

Re: What does your SPD Chart look like? We usually just use a whiteboard with pcs & villains listed in dex order down the left hand side with their phases marked in to the left, so you might have something like this: PC1 3 6 9 12 V2 4 8 12 PC2 2 4 6 8 10 12 etc. I don't think it really needs to be any more complicated than that. -Nate

How do you build these? Seems like it should be an AI, but do you make it a follower? Has anyone done that? Does it work? -Nate

Re: Resistant Piercing Question Got my answer via a private message. Thanks Edsel. I really like the fine grained control of this mechanic. Like others have said, it's a great way to differentiate between weapons in heroic campaigns without doing too much damage. It's really not cost efficient unless you take into consideration damage caps etc that are often in place in heroic games. Your GM might not let you have a 2d6 killing dagger, but he might let you have a 1d6 killing dagger with 3 RP, which is almost as good against people with decent armor. -Nate

Re: Resistant Piercing Question In response to a private message I sent to Steve Long asking if it was ok for you to explain resistant piercing (and referencing my recent purchases):

Re: Thoughts on Multiform I think the old way worked pretty well... I don't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like this: Make the base form - this is the form that the character will revert to if his multiform turns off. This character is built using the campaign point limits as usual. This character buys multiform at 1/5 points, 5 points for double the forms. The other forms use the same campaign points limit as the base form, however, the maximum points that any other form can have is equal to the base form's points minus the cost for multiform. You must pay for all points that the other forms have, regardless of whether they come from disadvantages or not, disadvantages just let you go above the base points for the campaign. So if your 350 point base character wants 4 alternate forms, the maximum they can be is 284 points (the multiform will cost 66 points). That sounds pretty fair to me - 4(5 really) 284 point characters in a 350 point game? Given how often I start off with like 400 point characters and have to pare down to 350, I think losing 66 points is pretty hefty. Yes, that can mean this guy is really a swiss army knife, but if everyone else is a longsword, is that so bad? -Nate P.S. since the calculation for "maxing" this power is a little wacky, here are some more numbers: Straight 350 point guy w/ single other form: 58 for the multiform, 292 points in the alternate form 350 w/ 2 other forms: 62 / 288 1000 w/ 1 alt: 166 / 834 1000 w/ 2 alt: 170 / 830 BTW, I'm using excel for this and using it's sweet circular reference fixer that just iterates the functions up to 100 times or when they stop changing by a significant amount. I have B which is base points, C which is cost of multipower, and M which is max points of alternate form. C = M/5 and M = B - C. Of course, for more than one extra form, add 5 per doubling to C's cost. To fix circular references, go into tools menu ->options calculation tab, and check "Iteration". Very cool feature.

Re: Extra information from 3d6 BTW, like to say, I just started playing Unknown Armies a couple weeks ago, and it's awesome. And I love the doubles mechanic, and I think it would be cool to add a similar mechanic to Hero. The to-hit rolls are so often the least interesting part of an attack.... and that goes 10x more when it's an area of effect attack (oh look, I didn't roll an 18, guess I hit). I like the effect being for triples, and I'd actually make 18 also have something in addition to being an auto-miss (since 18 is so often an auto-miss just by the nature of being such a high roll). I like the duality of it, where if you miss with triples you get something bad and if you hit you get something good. Doing something for all doubles would be too common, but you could do something just for double 1s and double 6s. There's 15 of each (not counting triple 1s), so that's only 7% each, which makes for a good percentage for more minor good/bad stuff. It adds complexity, but it adds a little more randomness without making things crazy. I kinda like it. -Nate

Re: Resistant Piercing Question I know it's as much in deference to the fine writers who put this book together as anything, so I'll go ask the copyright holder for permission. Happens to be pretty easy around here -Nate

Re: Dealing with Stun, End etc in Fantasty Thanks for all the replies guys. I may try out hit locations after the first few adventures... I'll be playing with guys who are pretty new, so trying to get them used to the system before worrying about all the optional rules. And Mark, you make a good point. Wounded opponents aren't a terrible thing, and with bleeding rules, unconscious and seriously wounded guys are going to die on their own anyway. Killershrike - Thanks, I was already gobbling everything up from your site I could... it's really a fantastic (heh) resource, looks like you must have spent a hell of a lot of time on it. -Nate

Re: Magic items - pay for base item? Curufea - sure you pay money for items, but you're supposed to pay points for magic items - otherwise it's no fair to the wizard who paid 4 character points for a fly spell when you walk into a store and buy boots of flight. As for dispel... I don't know that it should destroy items in general. Turn them off, sure. But destroy? I don't see it. It doesn't destroy powers of people, so why should it destroy powers of objects, let alone the objects themselves? That sounds like an area for transform. I know Independent is -2 because the power can be lost, in most cases from the focus it's in being destroyed... I just never heard of dispel being able to do it. I forgot to look up the rules on dispel last night, so I don't know what they say, but I thought dispel was only supposed to turn powers off, not destroy anything. Outsider - that's a good point, and one I had been thinking about. I'd probably do it that way... but I think I'll add a little more to the "wholly magical" items, like never needing maintenance, glowing, or whatever... something to make the player feel like they're not getting screwed compared to the guy who got his armor enchanted for cheap. -Nate

Re: 'Heroic' Movement Rate Variant There's two problems here - one, you're looking at a single phase as being comparable to any other phase. That's not exactly true. Think of each phase as just a fraction of a person's turn. The higher the person's speed, the smaller the fraction of that person's turn it is. So a speed 4 guy's phase is 1/4 of his turn, whereas a speed 2 guy's phase is half his turn. Forget about one phase = 1 second. Think one turn = 12 seconds and divide it by each guy's speed. Speed 2 guy spends 6 seconds per phase, speed 4 guy spends 3 seconds per phase. So even though they may both move 6" per phase, the speed 4 guy is running twice as fast. I know that's not quite by the rules, but it works pretty well in concept and it's really the only way speed makes sense. The other problem is that speed is multiplicative with the rest of your combat abilities and movement. the 10 points someone spends to go from speed 3 to 4 adds 33% to the amount he can move and attack during a round. That's a lot for 10 points. I think I'd probably set a characteristic maxima of 3 SPD, and thus make people pay double to go above that. 20 points is a lot, but speed 4 versus speed 3 is a big difference. -Nate

Re: Dealing with Stun, End etc in Fantasty I was using 2.66 as the average stun multiplier for killing attacks, and 3.5 as the average stun on 1d6 of normal attacks (and average body for 1d6 killing). 7d6 normal (I'm assuming you mean normal damage... that would be insane killing damage) damage is 24.5 stun and 7 body on average, subtract someone's 6PD, and you get 18 stun (rounding down) and 1 body. If he has 10 body, you'd have to do 180 stun to get up to 10 body to kill the guy. I'll take a look at hit locations... do they only multiply body? That would help some. How do the crit rules work? -Nate

Re: Magic items - pay for base item? Dispel destroys independent powers? That doesn't seem right... it makes dispel way too powerful in games that use any significant amount of independent items. As for balance, it sounds like the only reason to embed it in the armor is to protect against dispel, in which case, why not just buy the amulet with that much more strength (besides campaign limits etc)? And yes, I specifically wanted my armor as 8PD only. Why should metal armor protect from fire or electricity or cold? Since most magic comes in the form of energy damage, it seemed like a perfect way to have magic bypass armor in a completely logical way. I play a lot of D&D, so I'm used to armor being useless against magic, and I like that Hero has a really simple way to achieve that. Plus that makes it that much easier to make magical armor that works against those things... fire resistant armor: +8ED, only versus fire. Bam, magic armor that protects you from fire damage. Sweet. -Nate

Re: Dealing with Stun, End etc in Fantasty Maybe my superhero experience and the FH book itself are misleading me... but if your rDef is 6 and you get hit by something that does 2 1/2 killing ... that's 9 body and 24 stun on average... 3 body and 18 stun get through... even someone with 10 body will take three of those and live, but how many heroic characters have more than 54 stun? not many. It's worse for non-killing attacks. an 8d6 normal attack will do only 8 body on average (2 gets through), but 28 stun on average (22 gets through). it takes 5 hits to kill someone with 10 body, but by that point they'll have taken 110 Stun, enough to knock out even most 350 point supers! I haven't used hit locations, so I don't know how those affect damage... maybe that's what I should be using to increase lethality. It's not that I want people to be killed with fewer attacks... I just want the normal result of "attack until he drops" to be death not unconsciousness. -Nate

Re: New Talent: Spell Slot I'm curious, what system do you use?

Re: Resistant Piercing Question I hate to ask for rules from books I don't own, but this sounds like a great rule for my upcoming FH campaign, and I'd love to know what the full rules are. Given that I just ordered over $200 in fantasy hero books from herogame's website and picked up $60 worth of hero books at my local game store over the weekend, I don't feel too bad about asking for one rule from one book I probably wouldn't purchase anyway. So... what's this resistant piercing rule? 2 points for -1 to applicable defenses or something along those lines? -Nate

Say you have platemail which is 8PD OIF, Independent (-2 1/2) for a total of 3.43 points (I know you're supposed to round, but for now, let's keep a little precision). In a heroic campaign, you don't pay points for the (non-magical) armor. If someone wanted platemail of strength (+5 strength also OIF Independent -> 1.42 points) would you then make them pay 1.42 points, or 4.85 points? I think I've answered my own question, since you could make an amulet of +5 strength for a mere 1.42 points, and wear it with the armor.... the obvious answer must be that you only pay points for the magical part. Feel free to comment or disagree. -Nate

Re: Dealing with Stun, End etc in Fantasty Hmm... I really like the idea of just doubling or tripling everyone's stun totals. In a game where offenses and defenses are designed correctly, you should end up being low on stun and body at the same time... with normal attacks bringing proportionally more stun damage.... not terrible. I'll have to look at exactly what average defenses will be like and average attacks, to work out exactly how to change stun values. Cool I was thinking of just using END for casters... I like that Hero has a way to burn Stun as END and then Body as END.... nice and dark and dramatic As for not worrying about the numbers... it's the numbers that are half the fun, else why use a gaming system at all? -Nate

I'm planning to run my first FH game and a few things worry me about using Hero for fantasy. The first is stun vs body damage. In hero, 99% of the time, when someone goes down, they're unconscious. How do you make battle more lethal? The Fantasy Hero supplement gives several options, but none seem very elegant. Best one seemed to be putting reduced penetration on the stun from weapons (so you split the stun in half and apply it to the target's armor twice). That would work, I think but it's a little clunky, and it doesn't help when you are fighting someone lightly armored. I'm considering getting rid of stun from most weapons and leaving it for some spells, specifically trying to subdue someone, etc. Anyone have any suggestions that have worked well in their campaigns? Second - how do you deal with Endurance? I like endurance for spellcasters, but I'm not sure I like it for warriors and rogues and other people who are just running around. I mean, it's cool to have a mechanic to use to wear someone down by making them run around too much, but I'm just not sure it'll be worth all the bookkeeping. Any thoughts on these and other topics for my first game would be very handy. For reference, I've played plenty of Champions games, so I'm pretty familiar with the rules, just haven't played Fantasy. -Nate

Re: Converting D20 Modifiers to HERO To be precise about modifiers to rolls... +2 in D&D is approximately equal to +1 in Hero. It's not a definite conversion given that hero is bell curved and D&D is not, but in general, that's a good measure. -Nate

Re: UBO: Simul - Range? Area? Hmm... I guess I need to apply the ranged advantage to the cost of the UBO advantage (otherwise ranged drain UBO could mean two different things). If I ran the zoo, it would just be an adder on UBO to make it ranged for an extra +1/4 or something. Maybe I'll just do that instead. -Nate