Roland

Re: Growing Up Polytheistic

Re: Sexual Orientation=Psych Lim? If the character is in the closet, it would seem to be a limitation similar to Secret ID. But one could be in the closet with respect to any number of things, not just sexuality.

Re: Growing Up Polytheistic 1. The parts of the Bible adapted from "pagan" sources are more or less isolated to a few chapters of Genesis, plus bits of Judges and a few verses in some of the older Psalms. (There are theories about Esther and Job, as well, but these are tenuous.) It's somewhat anachronistic, however, to identify them as "pagan." They were part of the common mythological reservoir of the Middle East - they were not owned by any one culture. The pagan-related parts of Genesis do happen to be among the more interesting and memorable chapters of the Bible! 2. Much of the Bible is meant to be taken literally and historically. One must, of course, take into account the biases of the authors, but that's true of modern history, as well. The Bible, amazingly, sometimes reports events from conflicting PoVs (e.g., I Samuel) without trying to paper over the differences. 3. The fact that the Church allowed its converts to continue their old cultural practices, sometimes with a bit of modification to de-emphasize the overtly pagan bits, should not be surprising. From the time the Church decided that one did not have to become a Jew to be a Christian, it has been a multi-cultural institution. 4. The date of Jesus' birth has not been determined. There are many theories, but none has achieved anything even approaching consensus. The date of Easter, OTOH, is determined according to the old Jewish calendar. (The rabbis later reformed their calendar, which is why Passover does not always coincide with Easter today.) Pagan eggs and bunnies do not really figure into any official Easter observance. Eastern Christians generally use the term Pascha, rather than Easter, in order to emphasize the connection to Passover, rather than spring. 5. Brigid was a historical person - an Irish abbess. Her story has been confounded with that of the goddess she was named after (her father was a pagan), so it's hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. (This is not to say there are no fictional saints, but Brigid isn't one of them.)

Re: combat luck I think the problem with Combat Luck is the luck part. I don't get why "luck-based" is a disadvantage. Following the principle that a disadvantage that's not disadvantageous doesn't save you any points, 3 PD/3 ED, hardened, non-persistent , should cost 9 points. If you want it to cost 6 points, then either it should be just 2 PD/2 ED or you should add another disad (such as limited stacking with armor). At the higher cost it's not un-balanced. One way to approach limiting CL's stacking with armor might be to use the DCV penalty for armor encumbrance as a penalty to CL. So if a fighter is wearing heavy armor that encumbers him for -2 DCV, his Combat Luck would be reduced from 3 PD/3 ED to just 1 PD/1 ED. (I'm feeling a bit guilty about my light fighter's recent purchase of Combat Luck.)

Re: Growing Up Polytheistic Mithraism did not really "influence" Christianity. There might have been some parallel development, since they both arose in, broadly speaking, the same era and region. And Christianity, after it became the established religion of the Roman Empire, might have borrowed some superficial bits of Mithraism (as it did with other pagan religions), including its worship sites. But Mithraism had no influence on the main elements of Christianity, including death and resurrection.

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is a living religion. A few Z's remain in Iran. Most migrated to India after the Arabs invaded Persia - today they're known as Parsees. Many members of both Z groups live in the U.S. today. They are not well known because they are a small ethnically exclusive religion that does not proselytize. The founder, Zarathrushtra, was roughly contemporary with Moses, so Zoroastrianism not really a precursor of Judaism. But, during the Babylonian exile, the Jews were exposed to Zoroastrianism. After the Persian king Cyrus, a patron of Zoroastrianism, overthrew the Babylonians, he freed the Jewish leaders, some of whom returned home to Judah. Cyrus encouraged them in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. During the exilic and post-exilic periods, Judaism adopted some beliefs similar to Zoroastrian beliefs. It is difficult to prove the Z influence, but it is certainly a plausible hypothesis. Specifically, it has been suggested that the Jews picked up their beliefs in angels and spirits, the afterlife, and the messiah from Zoroastrianism. Rabbinic Jews (the Pharisees and their successors) believe in all of these things, but the more conservative, old-fashioned Sadducees never accepted these Z-like beliefs. This website has accessible information on Zoroastrianism, along with some links: http://www.pyracantha.com/zoroastrianism.html If you're looking for a possible precursor of Judaism, there was Egypt's brief montheistic period under Akhenaten.

Re: [Character] Carmen the Cynthian Point crunching: I would suggest reducing BODY to 11 and increasing CON to 13 - it's more efficient with respect to figured characteristics (+1 ED, +1 REC, +2 END). It would also be worthwhile to get STR up one more point - that gets you another DC with a broad sword, as well as higher PD and REC. Skills and Talents: Shouldn't his everyman CuK be Cynthian Plans, rather than Elweir? If you are going to allow him to have Rapid Healing, you should insist on an a special explanation for it in his background. Do you really want to allow the Sword Master talent (+1d6 when using a sword)? Valdorian Age rules strongly discourage allowing the deadly blow talent except versus summoned creatures. And 7 points is way too cheap for a bonus of 3 damage classes that applies in almost every combat situation. "When using a sword" is not a -3 limitation!

If you want your players to keep track of how much wealth they have in gold and various other forms, you need to give them an incentive to do so. You need to have markets where they can buy and sell things. You need to have officials collecting tolls, taxes, and tithes. So the real question is how much work you, as GM, want to do in fleshing out an economy for your players to interact with.

Gosh, with his Nobility bonus, Søren's functional PRE might be almost average! We're filthy rich? Since when?

Re: Deposed... In Western Europe, the nobles typically held their titles by a combination of hereditary right and oaths of fealty to superior nobles. Once the heir to a title had taken the oath and been confirmed in his title and lands, the title was normally his for life. It was much different in the East. Under both the Arabs and the Russians, for example, titles of nobility were handed out by the ruler (Caliph or Tsar) and could be taken back at any time (at least in theory). Nobles were sometimes transferred from one location to another, either as a sign of promotion (or demotion) or to keep a potentially troublesome noble from consolidating power in a given location. Or to go on a pilgrimage. A devout or adventurous ruler might go on a pilgrimage voluntarily. A bad ruler might be sent on a pilgrimage as penance.

This reminds me of the Chinese movie, "Red Sorghum." A clan member who was drunk and upset tried to ruin the year's batch of new sorghum wine by urinating in it. Everyone was quite surprised when, after a few months, they opened a vat and it turned out to be quite tasty.

Greek mythology could serve as good inspiration for a superheroic fantasy campaign. Jason's crew on the Argo included a number of demi-gods with superhuman abilities. This site lists all the Argonauts: http://www.greatdreams.com/jason/jason.htm

An agricultural economy cannot rely on a single crop - a bad year would leave everyone without a safety net. Perhaps they also grow subsistence crops for their own use. Combinations of grains and legumes make for a good crop rotation scheme and an adequate diet. Alternatively, once their trade routes and trading partners are established for the wine trade, they could take advantage of this network to market other goblin products to humans. Perhaps traditional goblin arts and crafts amuse wealthy humans. Or human children take a liking to a goblin-made toy. (Hmmm . . . Cabbage Patch Kids look kinda goblin-esque.) Unless the goblins can mount a credible military defense, they will need another strategy to avoid being annexed by a neighboring human kingdom. Perhaps you can set it up so that, for some reason, conquering the goblins would be more trouble than it's worth. The easy way is to make the goblins too poor and disorganized to bother with, but that would contradict your premise. Perhaps the goblins live comfortably in a geography that is not suited to humans. Or their main subsistence crop is unpalatable to humans, who are therefore not tempted to raid or tax the goblins.

Unless you spend extra points on weapon elements, relying on a martial art restricts your choice of effective weapons. There's an advantage in having the flexibility to choose different weapons for different opponents. Martial arts might be a more efficient way to purchase combat skills for everyday use in typical combat situations with a favorite weapon, but you might sacrifice flexibility for dealing with atypical situations. Offensive strike with a falchion usually works great, but there are times when I would rather have DCV or use a military pick. In our campaign, a 2-point KS is required in order to learn a martial art. I think that blunts the point-efficiency of martial arts over CSLs just a bit. And it fits well with the idea that a martial art is a defined, learned fighting style, not just a gimmick to make warriors more effective. A martial art might also come with restrictions imposed by the teacher (e.g., Psych Lims or Watched).

The damage bonus is already halved when applied to killing attacks, which would cover most weapon attacks in FH. I don't see that martial arts maneuvers result in any more power than the same number of points spent on CSLs. A particular maneuver might give slightly higher bonuses or a useful maneuver element, but it is also less flexible than a CSL. For instance, my FH character has a martial art (created by the GM) that includes four maneuvers: Fast Strike (+2 OCV, +2 DC), Passing Strike (FM, +1 OCV, +v/5 DC), Flying Dodge (FM, Abort), and Martial Disarm (+10 STR), all useable with all common melee weapons. His two attacks make him quite powerful offensively. Unfortunately, neither of his attacks provides a DCV bonus. Moreover, the required skills of his order were so expensive that it did not leave him any points to spend on CSLs. If he had spent the 25 points on CSLs instead of martial arts (and a complementary KS), he could have 5 HTH levels or 3 all-combat levels. He would lose the Full-Move element distinctive of his order's fighting style, but he would be no less formidable, all-around, in combat with the CSLs instead of martial arts.

Q: Since you revealed my identity, the Prime Minister, the Archbishop, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will, on the morrow, vie to determine whether I am to be executed for treason, heresy, or failure to pay my taxes. Why should I not wring your neck, Baldric? A: Four calling birds.

Killer Shrike - I agree with you. Unfortunately, the rules (currently) do not.

Studs & Rings If we grant the existence of studded leather, then I think it should obviously give more defense than the same kind of leather without metal studs - if only for internal consistency. Ring mail gives +2 defense over plain leather of the same type. What is ring mail? It's just leather covered with close-set metal rings. This establishes that adding metal to leather can increase its defensive value. If, by adding enough metal, one can increase armor's defensive value by +2, then there should be some lesser level of metal enhancement that would increase the armor's defensive value by +1. I would call this studded leather, since that is the traditional terminology for armor of that defensive value in fantasy RPGs.

Unfortunately, 5E doesn't permit you to use PSLs to offset DCV penalties. But I am coming to think that restriction on PSLs was probably a mistake.

Reduce the cost of Combat Sense to a more reasonable level and better define the circumstances when it can be used.

Aquarius is an air sign. The water signs are Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio. I hope the mass combat system (or systems) will accommodate various scales. If the PCs are joined by 20 NPCs to fight off 100 goblins, it would be nice to have a short-cut system that still allows for individual action by the PCs. But a large-scale battle with hundreds of troops of various kinds on each side is an entirely different kettle of fish. Will sample spells be sufficient to illustrate the magic systems? I would think the spells would be quite similar across systems. The big differences will be in the frameworks that the spells fit into. Perhaps you could use some of the sample characters later in the book to illustrate how characters might be built using different magic frameworks. Or build one spellcasting character multiple times, using different selected frameworks. It will be hard to do justice to each of a dozen frameworks, however, without using up a lot of pages. And most players will care about only one of the systems - the one their GM selects. Perhaps the detailed examples would work better as supplemental material than as part of the FH book: Maybe a DH article or web give-away. Or The Ultimate Wizard. A few sample enchanted items are necessary to illustrate how to apply the rules for creating items, but I would rather not see any more magic items than absolutely necessary. The power level and flavor of magic items should depend on the campaign/setting. You say you don't want to establish a default magic system. Please do not establish a default catalog of magic items, either.

Falchions did not weigh 6-8 pounds. More like 3-5 pounds (which is still on the heavy side for a single-handed sword). I saw that episode of Conquest. They were totalling up the weight of a knight's equipment. They were clearly going for a high number, so I think it was implied that all the weights were upper bounds. And the total relevant weight must include all the gear that comes with the sword - e.g., scabbard and belt or baldric. Still, I don't see how that would come to more than 10 pounds.

Prices, wages, and tech As the resident economist, I will back eepjr24 on this. In order for prices to be meaningful, you need to have some idea of how much people earn. I would recommend using a basic wage level of 1 silver piece per day for unskilled labor and pegging the price list(s) to this. GMs who want to use different base earnings levels could then adjust the whole price list up or down by a constant, or change silver to copper, or whatever. As someone else suggested, relative prices will vary with the technology/magic level. There are two ways to approach this problem: 1) Specify the tech/magic environment in which the listed prices would prevail, and then provide guidelines on how different tech/magic levels might affect relative prices. 2) Specify three different tech/magic environments and give three corresponding prices for each item, separated by slashes. Players would quickly get used to looking at, say, the first of the three prices if that is the price structure prevailing in their campaign. Some consideration should also probably be given to what happens in a small local economy when PCs start hauling treasure out of the local dungeon after slaughtering the inhabitants - or when gold or diamonds are discovered in the hills just beyond the town.