Nolgroth

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Campaign guidelines in message 2 have been edited to be closer to my original notes.

Re: Campaign Building Blocks: General Musings Re: Magic. I've always seen EGO as mental toughness akin to BODY. I've always seen PRE as the projection of will power in much the same way as STR is the projection of physical power. As to how spells are learned, it all depends on the special effect of how spells are cast. Complex formula with precisely memorized steps? INT is your stat. Intuitively projecting force of will? EGO or PRE. Again, I prefer PRE as the representation of how you project your will. EGO is how tough you mentally. Just my $0.02. Re: Worthiness of INT as a non-Magic stat. I use INT for a lot of things. Not the least of which as the "default" to Deduction. Deduction is the general skill I use for recall and memory. So when a player "looks" at me (hard to do online but you get the idea) and asks, "This person seems familiar. Did we run into them in an earlier adventure?" I answer with "Roll a Deduction check." If they choose, they can use INT (with a -2 penalty) instead. Usually only used if Deduction is at the Everyman level. Same thing with recalling numbers (phone numbers, launch codes, coordinates, etc) that they hear and do not have the ability to write down. For that purpose alone, INT is a valuable stat. RE: Starting Stats. I can see where you got the "start at 5, buy to 8" by looking at my guidelines. I actually intended to have a starting range of 5-15, with most people being in the 8-15 range. Sorry about the confusion that may have caused.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Finished season 1 of Life and working through season 2. All I can say is that I want to run that campaign. An excellent cop drama with a lot of humor that somehow doesn't get in the way of the drama. I think that fans of Castle would like this show.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate HDC and PDF updated. PDF Update posted in the characters message. Thank you.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Good luck on the job situation. Unemployment sucks and it is always more important to take care of life matters over gaming. Job = money = important life matter. I will hate to lose a good player, but I'd rather you get your financial situation taken care of first. Maybe there will be an opportunity to game together some time in the future. We'll leave a light on. Edit: Let me know when it is official so I can move Geoffrey from the Active list to the Inactive list.

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated Meh. Some guy has an opinion. No need for me to get all worked up over it. I thought D&D was inconsistent, self-contradictory and way too complicated with all the supplemental materials that were published along the way*. I doubt this guy would care about my opinion though. *And despite that opinion, I had a lot of fun with the system pre-d20. Never could summon up the ability to like D&D 3 no matter how hard I tried. Want to try 4th Edition though.

Re: Cloak of Belief (Faith) Tie-dye?

Re: Cloak of Belief (Faith) Hmmm. That's a good point. Reputation, OIF, Side Effect: Negative Rep with opposing faiths. Nice easy build. I think you are on to something.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Announcement: I am taking this Thursday (6/17/10) off to spend some quality time with my family away from monitors and computers. I plan on doing so again in July and August. I'll post dates for July and August as they become more set in stone. See you on 6/24/10. -James

Re: HERO SYSTEM BESTIARY Sneak Peek: The Cover I like it. Perhaps not as colorful as a full page painting, but I like the color coding that goes along with the sixth edition line.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Just restarted the server.

Re: Advice needed for balancing my first 6E campaign I have designed encounters specifically so that the characters could walk through a bunch of minions, only to have the characters stomped on (bad player die rolls versus good GM ones). Aside from that, pay close attention to DEF versus Body and Stun. Just a couple of points in either direction (high or low) can make a huge difference. HERO does not lend itself well to the single opponent boss versus characters unless the boss is really scaled up. I would probably up his DEF more than anything and possibly Speed. If you up his DC, he will probably wipe out the party. Best advice I can give you is go easy for the first couple of combats. Feel your way. If the enemy was dropped too quickly, increase the next one's DEF, Body, and Stun. If the bad guy isn't doing enough damage, increase that DC. If he was Stunned too easy, CON is your bet. Running out of END, increase END and Recovery so his post-12 Recovery compensates enough so he doesn't have to take Recoveries in the middle of combat. Speed and DEX. Mooks should be Speed 2, 3 tops. Henchman should be just under the heroes. Lieutenants should be right around the PC level. Master villains should be ahead of the PCs but by how much depends on your game. If your cap is 4, the MV should be 5 (6 absolute tops and have a good reason why - for yourself as much as the players). I have found Endurance burns out pretty fast. The faster the Speed (and hence number of attacks) the faster it burns. Post-12 will only recover so much of that precious END and STUN, so fast characters may have to take Recoveries more often than slower ones. Having a high Recovery is a great asset for high speed characters. I'm quite sure you will get all sorts of answers if you post them. As another suggestion, establish campaign guidelines for Characteristics Max, Skill Roll Max, DC Max, DEF Max, CV Max, Speed Max, Max Active Power Points, and all that other stuff. Stick with it and build your adventures around it. It's okay to raise those limits at certain "checkpoints" in the campaign, but MAKE THE PLAYER CHARACTERS STICK TO THEM. ~ahem~ Sorry for the shouting. That is the one lesson I learned quickly when running. Depending on what type of game you are running, even a marginal increase over those limits may make a character completely over-class his fellows. To challenge that character requires greater challenges than the other characters are perhaps able to meet.

Re: Cloak of Belief (Faith) Oh nice one Lucius. Bonuses/penalties were never mentioned, but I could see that happening.

Re: Cloak of Belief (Faith) Maybe add Visible to the mix. Detects, being a Sensory power, are typically Invisible. So throw Visible to Normal Sight into it. EDIT: Perceivable is the 6th Edition version of Visible. Final Build: Cloak of Faith: Detect Faith 11- (Unusual Group), Discriminatory, Analyze (13 Active Points); No Conscious Control (-2), Only to determine wearers religious beliefs and intensity Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (-1/2), OIF: Cloak (-1/2) Real Cost: 3 Note: Perceivable doubles up with Obvious Foci so cannot be taken (according to Hero Designer). So there is what I would use.

Re: Cloak of Belief (Faith) GM Fiat would be my first answer. Otherwise Detect Faith, Discriminatory, Analyze, Self Only, OIF (Cloak)

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Watching Life on Hulu. Took a few episodes to get into, but I am starting to really like the show.

Re: "Crowning Moment of Cool?" Ahh those bring back some great memories. Makes me want to run another space opera game.

Re: Do I need a metaplot for Star Hero? Short Answer: No. Long answer: If you design the campaign to be episodic (each episode or couple of episodes having an independent storyline) then you defy the need to have a metaplot. This is good for space police, salvagers, or any other contained story adventures. Over time, the campaign will develop a unique style and a metaplot may actually develop out of the actions of your characters.

Re: "Leadership" multipower

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Didn't see much of the later Angel when it aired and Hulu can't seem to get the license to air it so I have little comment on that. Buffy Season 7 pretty much has some of those gems in the mud, but most of those are at the beginning of the season (IMO). More mud accumulates as the season progresses. At least IMO.

Re: "Encounter" Powers I would build it with 1 Recoverable Charge. Simple and easy.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate As we go along, I want to index our major topics and what the outcome of those topics are. On the first post, you'll notice that I started doing that already.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Well then, in the interest of getting more important things done, I'll leave it as is. There are no strong feelings expressed so far in either direction so it makes no difference to the quality of the game.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Next topic question: Should I hide the NPC stats from Players? Currently, all PCs and NPCs (except the GM token) use the same Campaign Properties. This means that on a MouseOver action (hovering the mouse pointer over the token) some of the combat ready stats are displayed. Should I change that so only I can see those stats. From the GM side of the screen..... Pros: Maintains a sense of uncertainty when encountering bad guys. Allows me to "fudge" things by adjusting the difficulty "on the fly" for too easy or too difficult opponents. Cons: Violates the "open" table atmosphere of the game. Tempts me to "fudge" things even when not necessary. Discuss.