mhd

Optima and Helvetica, if I remember correctly.

It's a great analysis. And he definitely should be heeded when he warns about using some of the fonts for nostalgia's sake. (I'd add a lot more to that list than just Souvenir, but, welp…)

Yeah, that's the way I see it, too. Which kinda-sorta ruins it for me nonetheless, as I'm not that into Tekumel to warrant the effort to do so. I'm a bit perplexed by the people saying that this is just a Galaxy Brain troll effort.

For some kind of reason, my fights always run rather (in game turns, okay in real-life time). I'd also say that in real life skirmishes, there definitely are more pauses and thus "recoveries" than in RPG fights, where no action can get wasted. This might be one way to have breathers. I basically ignored most armor penalties the last time around. I'm not the biggest fan of the armour makes you slow type of rules, either. And with the given encumbrance rules in 6E it barely came into play. The people running around heavily armored also had "+ DCV, only to counter armour penalties", too. (We were playing in a setting where its original system had something like this, so that was on my list of pre-made abilities) But when I was reading the Fantasy Hero 3 rules, it got me thinking a bit. I'm not sure whether it's worth it, given that the "tanks" would most likely buy a bit of additional END anyway. But with END use for the attacks, plus armour it might add up well enough to come into play after a few rounds, whereas the skirmishers could prove their worth while the turtles take a breather. Thus without introducing anything totally new, the system creates incentives for different styles. (Although I guess this could be done with much less bookkeeping if I just have a table rule where we agree that only the swashbucklers buy additional SPD over the campaign average; maybe I have to find something equally interesting for the heavy infantry) On the other side of things, I couldgive penalties to people wearing an enclosed helmet in combat or leg armour when marching, but as a game rule that would feel a bit to "gotcha"-ish, realism set aside. Such a rule wouldn't really get anything.

So not even the default 6E encumbrance rules, but half that for worn armor, i.e. field plate would "cost" me 14kg? Hmm. I mean, I get that people want to countermand the old cliche that you'd need to be lifted on your horse by a crane. And yes, you can sprint, do cart-wheels etc. in plate. A higher END loss wouldn't change that anyway. But it being no more fatiguing than regular clothing? There's at least one study that comes to a different conclusion, and I'm sure there's even more about contemporary soldier loads. Never mind that part of me favoring the more drastic penalties comes from a gamist perspective. I'm okay with fewer DCV penalties, but heavily armored combat having different rest patterns can be quite interesting in my experience. Just more money being spent in your typically dysfunctional fantasy economy is a bit boring.

You'd need 20kg of equipment to get that with a 15 STR. Neither the cliche sword & board nor the more realistic pollaxe would get me there. So, huge dungeon backpack or lots of loot, in a situation where you can't drop it beforehand?

I've been a bit out of the loop regarding HERO, so it's only recently that I came across the Hall of Champions program. And I have to say that I really liked the concept, as I thought it was a neat way to get some content out there, reviving interest in HERO etc. But I have to say that I don't quite get the reason for some of the guidelines. As this might interest others, I thought I'll post this here and not just do it privately by email. If that's not appropriate, feel free to delete this (and hopefully respond via PM then ) So, if I'm reading the "Rules Variants" clause the right way, I'm not allowed at all to publish variant rules for the official settings, and if I make my own world, the relevant section has to be the first thing in the book, completely? So no short "this product highly encourages the house rules given in the Appendix section" notice? This means that I can't do e.g. "Iron Age Guns & Gunplay for Champions" at all, and if I have my own "Claws & Katanas" world, such content would have to be first, with the obligatory bad prose intro and setting description being pushed way back. Is it assumed that bad house rules would "dilute the brand" more than bad adventures/settings?

I recently found my old Fantasy Hero 3 books again, and noticed that "back then" armor encumbrance actually was a more serious thing. This bothered me a bit in 6E, and I think I house-ruled something the last time I ran it (geeze, 6 years ago). Let's say I pick a "field plate", weighing 28kg (actually not that far off from reality), and I'm reasonably buff for a Heroic campaign, i.e. STR 15. In 3E that means I get -3 DCV / 4 END per Turn. Reduced by my strength to 3 END / turn. In 6E it's a percentage of my STR, where I'm at the lower end of the 11-24% bracket, so -1 DCV / 0 END per turn. Quite the difference. I have to say that I like the 3E version a bit better. Fantasy Hero 6E suggests raising the weight of the armor for encumbrance purposes only, but it's not like a huge backpack version of this would be that much more sane. HERO's lifting capabilities are certainly on the more extreme side of things, so basing encumbrance on those shifts things into the superheroic quite easily (and having "realistic" characters being constrained to STR 10-13 would be a bit weird). I like END/round. Sure, it's bookkeeping, but a neat way to distinguish lightly armored and armed fighters from the heavy ones, and taking extra recoveries makes lengthier battles feel more visceral. How does the rest handle this? House rules? Don't care for armor penalties? Still using earlier editions?

Depends on the tech level. If the max is 16th century full plate, sure, everyone who can afford it and goes into combat probably would (and should) buy it. I think there's still a lot you can play around with to make other armors interesting, but everyone aiming for the best armour they could get is certainly not unrealistic. If your max is the Dendra panoply, something that comes with a lot more penalties and doesn't look as cool, things might be different. Even your heavy infantry guys might be happy enough with linothoraxes and decent helms. (As opposed to the OP, if I were to focus on a different style of armour, my cut-off point wouldn't be articulated plate, but maille)

Probably not within the narrow spectrum of the default armour system, where bronze gives you a -1, and thus most of the differences between the various degrees of iron quality is a rounding error... Never mind that it varied a lot in almost any age. Earlier tech doesn't have that much coverage and way higher prices, though. Although in a loot-based economy, the latter mostly matters for the very beginning of a campaign.

Armour is also highly impacted by the rules or lack thereof. For one, since early D&D there's supposed to be a whole spectrum of armour, graded primarily by their degree of protection. This leads to picking all kinds of protective garments from all over history and/or bad research (all those non-existing armor types prompted by illustrations and bas-reliefs). Because you need 5-10 types of armour four your rules. Also, in real life it would be much more likely that you didn't wear one garment with 30% protection but a good mobility, but rather triple its thickness so that you'd end up with 90%. Because getting hit at all is bad. Both psychologically and medically. Whereas in rules-land, you could have some kind of calculation that armor x might reduce your evade chance by a certain amount, but in the end you'll still end up with fewer hit points lost, so this "slightly protective" armor makes sense. So armour in most RPGs seems more a gamist trope, and one that people are very familiar with. Not sure whether one would like to mess with that and you'd probably need a few different armor types on the spectrum to make up for this. And thus the need for naming them, which most likely leads to stealing from all over history. Finally, fantasy worlds are all over the place, i.e. everything but a few exceptions (Hârn) has a high nutritious pulp content. So you got your knights, vikings, musketeers plus orcs, samurai etc. Having distinctive armour for those leads to further bloat. So yeah, a smaller world should lead to more control over that, where you might be able to get by with a few different styles of armour. Then you could probably come up with a few variants of those (coverage, excellence in manufacturing etc.) to get a sufficient amount of list items to satisfy the gamers who like to weigh their options and consider trade-offs.

Aren't we? Most fantasy RPGs are steeped into renaissance tech. Rapiers, "full plate", galleons, frequent inns & taverns, cheap beer, mercantilism etc. Everything the 16th century offers bar gunpowder. The tropes favor a pretty late point in history, you'd have to specifically state your sub-genre if you don't have that. Never mind that the tech level of "sword & sorcery" is dodgy as heck. No issues with full plate in Conan.

Which is basically what Fuzion did. I don't even think the conversion itself would be a big issue (just triple BODY), but I've yet to see a good way to reconcile that with STUN. Taking half as STUN seems a bit unsatisfactory. You're dead before you run out of STUN. Which is why Fuzion and its derivatives mostly treat STUN attacks as separate or drop STUN altogether. (With short-term stunning being caused by large enough wounds or blunt trauma) The normal damage roll is a great mechanic to model taking two kinds of damage, both being variable. But it naturally leads to a 1:3 BODY/STUN ratio. Take away the post-12 recovery, and things look slightly different. Well, my previous campaign did have rather low maxima, so at most we had STR 15 with rather high END values (>30), so even there voluntary recoveries where mostly about STUN. For the next one (where I'll introduce this new damage mechanic), we're using the characteristics templates from Narosia (where you just pick 5 pre-selected packages), which leads to a much lower END/STUN, so END might actually matter for once. Which is fine for me, as I tend to like mechanics that stretch out battles and creates lulls in combat, at least for Heroic-style games. Anyway, my new game will start tomorrow, and there's even a chance that we'll get to play once the character creation is done… I'm going all out and will use the AVAD mechanism, the suggested maneuvers and the hit location modification. I do agree that more options in combat are actually fun and appreciated by the players, especially if there's no buy-in. And as we played without hit locations in the last campaign (which was the first exposure to HERO for some participants), having no separate STUNx/NSTUNx etc. multipliers but just simple added dice is actually a lighter load and will simplify things. Well, at least that's what I hope it'll do. I'll definitely report back after the first few battles.

My current campaign just ended yesterday and we had quite a few snake eyes rolls, so this might just be the time to introduce this as a new rule, psychologically speaking. I'm not quite sure about "killing stun" attacks, though. The ability to totally ignore any kind of natural resistance looks a bit too good for material weaponry, that's probably more suited to tasers etc., whereas even a good pick/mattock would have to compete with the Land Behemoth's layers of blubber. Also, I'd feel more inclined to add regular PD to rigid armor as an additional benefit. Both chain and plate are quite good at defeating edges, but plate distributes the attack a bit better or lets it glance off. So chain might have rPD 5 and plate rPD6 + PD2. And you would need that, as converting to normal rolls would mean an increased amount of STUN compared to a KA with a 1d3 multiplier. Strength adding normally to the damage role instead of a Min STR sounds nice, but I fear that this might devalue that stat a bit too much. If the campaign is somewhat realistic, even STR 15 would be very rare. So for most weapons, most people will be able to use them and add 1 die. Besides added brawling damage and encumbrance, there'd be little incentive to raise your STR. If one uses lifting as a benchmark, using the alternative strength table from APG might extend the possible values a bit. Although even then, I don't think holding the world record in weight lifting equates to a STR 26, as that would include Pushing and using some kind of PS: Weight Lifting as a complementary skill.

Given that the HERO damage system doesn't appear to be that linear, why multiply at all? Adding DCs would get you a similar effect and be more in line with the rest of the rules. (Going one step further and treating armor as damage negation would take away the joy of rolling more dice, so that's probably a bit too far) What I've seen in other systems was removing the connection between hit locations and the sheer amount of damage, if you could gain the damage from somewhere else (i.e. the margin in this place). That leaves us with the benefits of striking a more badly armored section and causing more beneficial impairment. That would also mean removing something like the "Vitals". Whether your torso hit connects with an organ or your head hit caused brain injury is a factor of the damage alone then. One could easily divide ones margin to achieve said effects. If impairment rules alone aren't enough, maybe add some additional benefits of hitting certain zones (e.g. reduced CON vs. Stunning for head hits, limbs not contributing to death etc.).