mhd

Re: Hero GUI Those times are gone. Sure, there are some versions of Linux that are definitely barebones and meant for experts, but the most common ones you can download (e.g. Ubuntu) offer about the same basic functionality as Windows 7 or OS X. Most of the obscure errors you could run into are due to the huge variety of PC components, but that's something that breaks Windows, too, and in my recent experience it's easier to recover in Linux. The weird technical stuff isn't that much closer on your Linux desktop, but I would say that there are more Linux people into the weird stuff. It's a bit like Germany. GUIs are actually one level to high if you're looking for a decent analogy. Every graphical application is highly specialized, the only thing that would come close to that in a system like HERO is probably a finished character, or at least an archetype with a few open options (e.g. a Brick template). If you want to present the existing rules in a new, more palatable way, don't look at the end-user side, look at the programmer side. We're basically at an 80s level there right now, with a decently indexed monolithic manual.

Re: Hero GUI The way it goes: You post your problems on some forum before you go to sleep, and when you wake up you'll a) have no answer, because the problem with all its permutations is too individual, get three messages telling you that it works on their computers or -- more likely -- c) be insulted for not looking at some obscure documentation yourself.

Re: Hero GUI Let's say you have an instance of Aid, with some adders and modifiers. Then you print all that in an abbreviated, collected form. That's what I would understand as a "power card". In my experience, they generally only help if the rules aren't generic anyway (D&D spells) and/or are used for tracking uses of a power (e.g. D&D 4E powers).

Re: Hero GUI Dear Deity, please no Power Cards or other regurgitated single-purpose rule collections. Make documentation more accessible, but keep it in one place. This way people will have to look some things up, but at least they're more likely to learn from that. So instead of putting all the required rolls, special cases etc. of a power in one block, make it reference the required rules. Next time you have to construct something of your own, you know the basics. Empower the users, don't patronize them. Which was exactly the point of Stephensons essay, if I remember correctly. No GUIs, man pages.

Re: How similar are Fantasy Hero 5e and 6e? 6E is basically an unofficial reprint of Lyndon Hardy's "Master of the Five Magics". With a few pages of RPG stuff to deceive the lawyers.

Re: Building times I don't know if I'm allowed to recommend that here, but GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3 has some crafting and building rules that could easily be converted, seem at least somewhat researched and aren't very complex (e.g. for buildings you calculate the cost according to some easy formula or table and divide that by the wages of the builders to get duration. A bit too "mythical man-month" at times, but better than some D&D "name level fortress" stuff I've seen).

Re: Where do your chars put their XPs? Isn't epic fantasy where a bunch of farmboys become ultimate heroes pretty rare? Sure, *one* farmboy, but most often because he's the Chosen One, and then gets his abilities pretty much in one fell swoop, not bit by bit, slaying one orc at a time. Not that genre emulation is all that important, the RPG trope on its own has its own merits, although personally I have a bigger fondness for the "fantasy effin vietnam" section of it than the "quest for immortality" end. One player in my group recently told me that he does like that structure, but for a different reason - it's not so much about the starting power (he likes some oomph), but about having a more vague character at the beginning, so that there are more ways to go from there. Personally, with the usual Heroic point values I have no problem with that, as you can always put enough points in some generic abilities or characteristics, and do the "skilled" stuff later on. So you might start out as a "zero", but as a Vanya, the ox-carrying zero.

In a somewhat typical fantasy campaign, where do your players tend to put their precious new points? I'd be especially interested in the more skill-heavy characters, as it's not really that hard to drop a boatload of points in martial abilities or spells. But after a while, your "rogue" might hit the skill limits for his favorite shticks. Do your characters tend to branch out after that or even before it happens? How are your "ground rules" for that in general? If you've got something like "no sudden awakening of magical abilities after campaign start" (aka. "Hogwarts has no correspondence classes") or "no (quasi-)supernatural combat feats", point distribution is affected, of course. Requring training is an important factor, too. If you would need to spend a few weeks in the academy to get a new spell but don't have the opportunity for that, some wizards might spend points on more immediately attainable abilities, e.g. raising their Stealth/Climbing.

Re: Sign Language Your Rep Power is higher than mine, so I have to accept that as a fact.

Re: Sign Language Or that Germans have a facility for following orders.

Re: Sign Language What's the native tongue of someone born deaf? As far as I know, something like ASL isn't just a "digital" representation of English. Here's an interesting, somewhat related Straight Dope article.

Re: Miracles vs Magic: The Faith Reserve I've played in a system that uses something pretty similar, where you had your "karma points" which only regenerated by converting heathens, preaching etc. Depending on the campaign style, one has to be sure that there's a certain level of "automatic" recovery, at least as long as you're on a relatively normal priestly path, or else there's too much playing to the mechanics. Priests looking for "just one more convert/congregation" can be pretty similar to the "I just need one more goblin for the level-up"…

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

Re: "Realistic" gun damage That's what I intend to do for this campaign. Find some decent enough base line and scale back my black powder-equivalent weapons from that. And while I'm at it, take down longbows a few notches, too. As I'm not playing a modern age game with a somewhat tactical bent, I can leave contemporary pistols and rifles alone for a while

Re: Dealing Additional Damge to Creatures due to a Weapon's Material If the sword does more damage because it's made of silver, that sounds like a Vulnerability. If it does it because it is "The Silver Sword", i.e. the power derives from something beyond just the material and thus more unique, I'd make it a KA. Deadly Blow seems to do it via CSL, so that might run into damage doubling limitations, which doesn't seem as appropriate.

Re: "Realistic" gun damage Yes, I've remarked about that in post #11. This goes a long way to justify the spread, although I still think that the "placement" of each weapon within that range of looks a bit odd.

Re: "Old school" lightning bolts I checked to be sure (I mostly remember this from the old SSI games). Doesn't start at your fingertips (the 3E one does), range is level-dependent, area of the lightning bolt is fixed, although you can choose between a narrow beam and wide one with half the length (so a Multipower if you really want to simulate every detail).

Re: "Realistic" gun damage That's what I'm asking about. It seems "Guns, Guns, Guns" has some useful information regarding that, so I'll probably head down that route. I'm alright with a rather simplistic approximation, e.g. just going by muzzle velocity. But to judge that, I'd need information about the efficiency of the powder, the action etc. Stuff I wouldn't really want to do on my own in a real-word, scientific manner. I'm alright with game terms someone came up with. Like I've mentioned above, I don't even want to go too deep in the wounding aspect, as this probably entails a horrible litany of ballistic gel, pig carcasses and borderline autistic people arguing about "tumbling" and "wound paths"…

Re: "Realistic" gun damage A modern machine gun is more accurate, spews out more bullets *and* hits with a higher force with each single impact than a Napoleonic musket, sure, no problem. I have no issue with the accuracy or the rate of fire. My issue, for the sake of this thread, is bullet oomph.

Re: "Realistic" gun damage Why would I need to include autofire? To make things even worse? I would expect a single bullet from a M82A1 to be more damaging than one fired from a Brown Bess, not the opposite. Edit: The original remark was more about the spread of the die than calibers, so in hindsight this reply might seem a bit out of place. Still, autofire is somewhat of a non-issue, as I'm not "complaining" about "statistical damage per second", but of simple, per-bulllet damage.

Re: "Realistic" gun damage Hey, like I've said before, I really wasn't thinking about requiring a degree in trauma surgery for the players - note the quotation marks in the thread name. Two things prompted my query: 1) The relatively low spread, e.g. .22 plinker/1d6 - .50 BFG /3d6 (excacerbated by me coming from GURPS, where damage can be substantially higher with BODY/HP being pretty much the same) 2) Black powder weaponry doing more damage than anti-vehicular weapons, because they've got a bigger caliber, i.e. bullet size beating all other technological implications. So "realistic" as in "d6 in proportion to actual output". Just some basic math, not advanced medicine

Re: AoE HTH attacks and Blocking Of course this will only postpone the problem, but triple human size seems a bit low to justify AoE fists…

The APG already has the "Conforming" modifier to create fireballs that expand to their natural boundaries, and this made me think of the way lighting bolts where handled in old AD&D editions: If there's range left when it hits a wall, it reflects straight back again. This could be a "conforming line", but those basically just give you more "usable" area, whereas a reflection could potentially hit targets twice. So a normal lightning bolt, plus a linked secondary one, originating at the point of impact? RKA 3d6, AOE: 25m line (+1/4) + RKA 3d6 AOE: 25m line (+1/4), Indirect (+1/4), Linked (-1/4), No Range (-1/2), Only covers area remaining from linked attack (-1/2) Anything I've missed? (I'm assuming a "physics be damned" approach, i.e. it will always reflect straight back, even if hitting an object at an angle, no ricocheting attacks possible)

Re: Empathic Healing plus Damage Link Yeah, the "Shield Other" thing would probably be the intentional version of this. Don't get me wrong, nobody but martyrs would want anything like this, it's more a campaign-specific side effect of healing, making it harder for battlefield duty. Building it as a linked power makes the basic Healing more expensive, but I can live with that And yes, Res. Protection seems to be the way to go, probably as much PD/ED as the healer has BODY.