mhd

I would assume that the OP is postulating a time where the arms race hasn't caught up yet, or that the laws of magic favor the defense. Unless we can make a super-super weapon that's powered by armulet tech. What offensive thing can we do with cling-sheet force fields? Not too get too nerdy about biol-magical warfare featuring force fields and living projectiles, but quills, like hair are dead matter. Which is also why there's a big industry for full body Brazilians in the magical amulet age.

Did anyone ever play around with a more detailed rule for sectional armor than the one in FH 219? Looking at the same section, one could just use the more detailed tables regarding armor weight and use that instead of just going by section. This makes the calculation more granular (i.e. the chest has a higher importance than the hands, despite both being one section). But of course this might be more correct in regards to geometry, but not necessarily when it comes to fighting. Where both training and physiology favors certain targets. In melee combat, one could give the head a bigger weight, and the feet a lower one than as dictated by their sheer volume. Anyone ever do anything like this? I don't mind more complicated calculations, that's what spreadsheets and JavaScript are for.

He's a family values candidate. Odd family, but stil…

I'd want to figure knockback resistance into that, so Aunt May, after a few hours of Tae Bo, isn't totally gonna drop that Brontosaurus/Moon Nazi mech walker. Unless that's intended. I don't judge.

I think combat would probably be very boring looking. Your armor is pretty great and doesn't encumber you, so you'll carry around huuuuge purely offensive weapons to get something through. Unless there's a way to actually defeat armulets, it's probably closer to a sporting match than what we'd consider a pitched battle. So, basically, Greek hoplites meets anime meets American handegg meets Takeshi's Castle. The mechanical properties would influence this a big deal. For example, let's say the amulet is the equivalent of uniformly distributed padded plate. That means that your movement isn't restricted in any way, and your opponent can turn that against you. Expect a lot of strong, burly wrestling types to try joint manipulation. So we're moving the fanboy spectrum from Thalhoffer-dweebs to MMA-twerps (and your force field won't even hide your Affliction shirt!). It also would be a great excuse to bring in your favorite style of combat to the exclusion of all others. So the armulet is even better: You're almost invulnerable and there's even some kind of repelling force to deter grapplers. But wait, there's more: To defeat it, clever wizards focused the energy of dying stars into a miniscule point and the gravpier was born. So the only possible style you've got is epee fencing. (I'm sure I could come up with some kind of magobabble to rule out arrows) Or maybe biological matter isn't deterred by the force field, in which case throw away all your weapons and let's get ready to bareknuckle rumble.

Yeah, counterstrikes and feints are just normal stuff that happens, maybe dependent on rolls and how you distribute CSLs. Not everything is an explicit action, especially if there's not a big tradeoff involved. And I don't really see the gambit in a move like this. If I put 3 levels of CSL to DCV, I'm as good at defending as someone less trained who's aborting to dodge, after all.

So, what about Trip? There's a second line of defense for me keeping stuff, but not against falling to the ground. Is this some kind of subtle social commentary?

This will lead to lots of relentless brawling. Possibly even parkour. And it'll take about 6 months to a year until someone will invent a very limited form of said amulets for, erm, down there. One of the big questions is how this will influence weaponry. What are the specific weaknesses of said force fields? As opposed to armor, there are probably no gaps or weak spots, so small pointy bits will be less popular. Does it collapse if punctured? Can it be circumvented by the usual "very slow" attacks, whether it's blade or grappling? Does it just spread force or absorb it? Can I overload it?

It's been a while since I read the first two books of that, and I hope I'm not mixing anything up with the somewhat similar Black Company stories. But IIRC there was something about mages having "Warrens", which were both "specialties" and dimensions used for e.g. quick travel. If this is GURPS-inspired, it's probably about its "Aspected Magery", where you could only cast spells from one "college". Which is a common enough concept and pretty easy to emulate in any kind of game system. Other than that, was there something special about Malazan magic? If it's just about curtailing access to spells, that's no problem. Spells themselves and balancing with non-casting characters on the other hand...

As we've heard, plenty of men don't have this option either. There's also no good way to do a lazy half-hearted attempt, where you just shave parts of your legs (cf. goatee). On the other hand, there is some feminist backlash against a "duty" to shave ones lower extremities/armpits/R-rated areas, whereas I haven't seen the same for men (patchy beards, back hair...) -- quite the contrary, even though full bears are hip again, the general trend toward manscaping is more mainstream than ever. So, there, sexism. I often do wonder how things would look like if a solid permanent epilatory solution would exist (no lasers, no chemical burns). No shaving vs. never having the option of having a beard? We'd probably get protests from all sides, men "being emasculated" and women "having to mutilate themselves".

I still think the most problematic "hairy issue" the geek community has is the goatee.

Isn't this just a variant of the good ol' "you're either unsuccessful/underground or a sell-out" shtick?

We're currently using the variant Luck rule where you roll your luck dice at the start of the session, and for every pip you get to re-roll one d6 of a check. Started doing that after a player complained about chronic bad luck when making his luck roll... Another player wanted a way to boost his success chance when casting spells by expending more magical energy, and we implemented that with aspected luck rolls (w/ END costs). I included a 1d6 version of this with the basic "yer a wizard, Harry" package. As we don't have daily regeneration of your magical END reserve, you've got two precious resources to think about before using that power. I thought about including a Side Effect with this, so if your roll still fails after pumping your magical force in it, something terrible might happen. This might be a good idea for other uses of magical luck, too. Although you can always go with a combined Luck/Unlock roll if you're doing the RAW 1/6 method.

I've "binged" Bosch, the Amazon-funded police procedural where someone made the insane casting decision of letting Titus Welliver play a good guy (the horrendously named Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, LAPD detective). Didn't even hear of the novels, but liked the series, especially how they took their time and solved a crime in 10 40-minute episodes, something that a CSI metastasis might've handled in one. More time for creating a modern, yet noir-ish point of view.

"I'm sworn to carry your burdens" always sounded euphemistastic to me. Although not the way Lydia says it.

If clerics are powerful and the sole source of magic, this would be a very god-centric game. My visual instincts would veer towards the Akkadian/Babylonian/Elamite side of things, as I can't quite picture a more developed society with this as a core concept. And I think priests as "doctors" would just be the very start, almost every important profession or important societal position would correspond with a clerical position of some order/god. Mostly theocracies, of course. Personally, I'd vouch for some alternative so that things get more interesting. People tapping divine power directly (i.e. wizards), or faith being the only requirement and thus institutionalized religion not being the sole path (which would lead to independent autodidact priests/shamans protbably being treated like witches/mutants at first, but, well, at least that's a start). And the divine concepts would probably have to be pretty primeval, as a lot of what we see in the usual late-/post-medieval fantasy setting wouldn't appear there first, unless the gods are somwhat Pratchett-esque. (Speaking of that, an Om-like situation would be another angle to disrupt the static nature of such a setup)

In my opinion, the best dungeon delving setting is still Alice in Wonderland. (I liked RN as a setting, not that fond of the story as this really is peak-trope REH)

You're missing one commercial factor: How common is healing magic? We know the potential source of the healing magic, but you'd still need to know the other factors influencing availability: Does it require membership? Is membership exclusive (can I worship at more than one temple) Does it require payment? Can every cleric do it? How often can a cleric do it? Any other limitations? This is usually hand-waved in D&D settings. It's a big difference if the average priest is a "0-level commoner" and actual spell-casting ability is rare and valued, or whether pretty much any local parish cleric is 3rd level, and 9th level people (where you can raise the dead) aren't all too uncommon, often the high priests of city temples. And does the god give this out at the cleric's disgression up to the usual limits of the spell system (D&D x/day, HERO: once per customer per day)? That means a lot of healing, if clerics are plentiful, i.e. it would be a big economic factor. If the healing cleric is a rare saint who has to specifically petition the god or intermediates every instance for this healing, then this becomes a much smaller issue. But as healing is just a special case, I think one of the core assumptions we've got to have is the gods being either very remote or having some internal order established. If it's just a willy-nilly, no-pantheon affair, I expect the war god to take over within a couple of primeval aeons, and the adventurers will never encounter anything but his temples, everything else being trampled in the dust (I'd give the god of death a fair chance, though). So given some celestial order, there are still plenty of possibilities. Let's go with a rather strict version: Magic is common enough, but only for the faithful, who can't be ecumenic. In this case, healing magic might appear like a very good deal. On the other hand, we're often over-rating that coming from a adventuring/murderhobo perspective. For most of the people, healing wounds isn't as big a deal. It's nice to have if a construction block falls on you or you're mauled by wild bears, but you can always protect against that, too (i.e. petition to the god of luck or the demi-celestial of ursine rampages). Healing sickness is where the money's at. Famine happens often enough, and even if the gods protect you from that, old age is universal, and with it, its illnesses. So that's a pretty good deal, I'd say. For a farmer, this might be pretty clear cut. If the Goddess of Life causes my crops to grow and granny not to die of dysentery, then wohoo, praise Gaia! (It gets worse if one thing is done by the God of Crops & Stuff, and the other from the Mother Deity of Not Dying Horribly) But it's still not the only option. Mundane healing might not be that bad, and having lots of money for it from worshipping the God of Pecuniary Affairs is a good start for hiring healers. Warriors and soldiers have some hard choices to make. If it's as you said and you get healing on the battlefield, than awesome, that takes care of 95% of my healing requirement, and without the war gods blessing I'll never get old enough to receive the Divine Medicaid of the Goddess of Life. That would be like buying car insurance for those who might get one if they ever move out of NYC just so you can get the current low rate. Now, if it's not just about side effects and circumstances but total exclusivity, then what do I do: Take care that I get the sword blessing of Angry Hierarch Mulcahy, my company's war priest? If not, those who do have the clear advantage in combat over me. Do I ever manage to actually get to my priest, who's this awesome laying-on-hands dude? On the other hand, if I mostly fight worshippers who also hedged their bets (maybe for a post-soldiery merchant career or officers who pray to the Divine Overlord of Mostly Thunderbolts & Stuff), skill is enough and I can use that healing and crop-growing for later. (It gets even worse if there's a God of Protection in the pantheon, too) So in my opinion, that would still be pretty open given the usual magic and average adventure-type availability. For most situations, it's even more ecumenical, e.g. when spells aren't that common or you can pay for them.

I prefer to mix it up. I mostly play fantasy, and that means we can have sessions where combat is 90% of the experience (combat, kick in door, combat...), some where it's all building up to a big fight (~ 1 hour) and some where we don't have any fights at all. The average fight takes us about, well, 30 minutes, I'd say. Less if the enemies are brutes and/or glass cannons and I can't be that devious and/or cowardly.

My hazel orbs flash with wrath and disgust! "Know ye, that amongst my people, mercy is considered a vice, a wisdmo you "civilized" pigs forgot long ago!", shriekst I. If we're doing YA stuff, too, you got to read at least a few books of the Chronicles of Prydain. It seems I'm one of the few fans of the Disney movie, but the books are so much better. Also serves as a good entry for reading the Mabdingbob..., Mabonigoney... that Welsh myth book.

The first Dying Earth book/collection is a bit haphazard and doesn't really fit in well with the style of the others. And after all, the second novel came out 15 years later! "The Dying Earth" is still pretty much swords & planets & sorcery literature, and even the stylistic elements of the later works are only barely there (the thesaurus-heavy prose, creatures known only by their names). And, yes, probably not the most feminist book, this being 1950 and mostly part of a genre that, well, has some issues. Although I thought the whole T'Someone vs. T'SomeoneElse deal (no time to google their names) was quite interesting. But I'll have to include myself amongst those for whom it's been a while. I think the last time I reread the series, I skipped straight to the great part. So I think when people praise TDE, it's mostly about the two middle books, i.e. the ones featuring Cugel the "Clever". Those are definitely worth reading and rather different from the first book. The fourth one is stylistically not that different, but features a different main character and raises the power level a bit too much for me (it's all about archmagicians). Cugel himself is a great character, basically the anti-Conan (more so than Elric). Although that's a frequent source of complaints: He's not exactly a lovable rogue, and people often shy away from books (or movies/TV shows) where they can't cheer for at least one character. Then again, Seinfeld ran 10 seasons...

Speaking of Lando, I think I need a sweet GM cape. And it's not pretty, it's also useful, as you can use it in lieu of a screen for the occasional hidden roll. Although I guess that would be more Lugosi than Lando.

Anything not by Anthony, Eddings, Lackey or Goodkind and not containing vampires is a decent start in my opinion. I'm not good at ranking things, so I just pick some novels/series that stuck with me over the years: - Master of Five Magics / Secret of the Sixth Magic, Lyndon Hardy - Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K. Le Guin - Song of the Lioness, Tamora Pierce - Drenai Series, David Gemmell - Black Company Series, Glen Cook Mostly older stuff, I'll see if the more recent ones keep fresh that long. I've enjoyed Lynch, Abercrombie, Martin etc, and still can't quite get myself to like contemporary/urban/steampunk fantasy, even if it's written by great authors.

"The Fantasy Trip", the grand-daddy of all hex-based role-playing games. Movement and attacks were pretty much all you had, not sure whether the original even had defense. And strangely enough, that's enough to create a deeply tactical experience (and one that runs splendidly fast).

That's a good point, you can change a lot depending on whether a +3 stunt bonus is a quadruple backflip quintuple ninja slash, some weird German word from some medieval fencing manual or a Howardian description about the evisceration of your enemies.