Tasha

I find that most of my characters have:

Protective of Innocents

Vengeful

Recently I find that most of my characters have:

Always keeps word freely given (Not under duress)

I guess it comes from playing so many Faerie characters.

Most of my older characters had:

Overconfident

but many of them were bricks who wouldn't be really harmed by this one.

I find that I also like curious characters. They are really fun if you have a bogged down adventure. I just love sticking my nose into dangerous situation.

Tasha

Re: Hatred + Enraged

Originally posted by Alcamtar

I have a player who is proposing (for his PC):

 

-15 Psych Lim: Hatred of Orcs and Goblins (com, strong)

-20 Enraged: when facing Orcs and Goblins (com, 11-, 11-)

-20 Hunted: by Orcs and Goblins (8-, mo pow, public id)

 

My question: Does hatred of orcs and goblins overlap with being enraged by orcs and goblins? It seems to me that both disadvantages are going to result in this character attacking goblins on sight. I'm not sure it's worth 35 points...

 

Also, if he is HUNTED by orcs and goblins, he has a good incentive to fight -- self defense! Does he really need extra points for attacking them too?

 

I'm looking for opinions. He's getting 55 points for this, and it all seems to result in "fighting orcs." Also, with this many points, I'm gonna have to stick orcs into virtually every session!

 

Does this count as a "single category of disadvantages?"

 

What do you think? Can these disadvantages work together reasonably? Could this be a "cool thing" in the campaign? These are all appropriate for the PC in my campaign, but I'm not sure about the combo.

 

Mike

I think that this is reasonable. Hatred of ______ doesn't mean that the character will automatically attack. It just means that the character won't trust, talk to or be see with the object of the hatred. Personally I don't like to see enrages on heroic characters, but the enrage does work. It is the I automatically attack.

Then it is perfectally reasonable that this hateful unreasonable person is hated back by the object of his hate.

So to mess with this character, I would make the Orcs and goblins more than the cannon fodder of the week for the characters to kill. Have tribes of Orcs and Goblins that are more civilized and who trade and are mostly lawful folks. Make sure that some NPC that the characters trust see these tribes as good folks.

Make these disadvantages count. If you are just going to use Orcs and Goblins in the D&D video game hack and slay sense then these disads are gleaning many points for doing something that the characters are going to do anyway.

Tasha

Originally posted by Kristopher

Wouldn't getting a subscription to that mag be a dead giveaway that you're a super?

Not necessarally, if this magazine was published and sold on newstands. You would find that it would have a large readership of nonsupers. So if you were a super and subscribed to this magazine, you would just have to show that you were a fan of supers.

Tasha

Re: Cafe Press Question

Originally posted by HeroTina

Since there has been a lot of talk about Hero Games nic nacs, I am looking into the Cafe Press option.

 

So I have a question:

 

How much would you pay for a Hero Games Mug? Small, Large, Travel?

Baseball Cap?

Regular white or grey t-shirt?

Wall Clock?

Lunchbox?

Calendar?

 

Cafe Press has a million things to put pictures on these are a few choices.

 

T.

I would pay $21 for a Woman's Tee with Superhero/villian artwork on it.

Journals with Champions art, organization logos would be cool too.

Big soda cups would be more useful than mugs.

Tasha

Re: My players have become villians

Originally posted by John515

Tonight was a night that turns a whole campaign upside down . My players have decided to change sides and become supervillains. They have blasted the city mayor with a 14d6 EB and kidnapped a local businessman with ties to the Russian mob, asking that he bring them on board. The mob boss accepts their offer and put them on the payroll.

 

Why did they do this? The reason has to to do mostly with the frustration with the local and federal govt. One of the players stated that he is simply tired of being a hero for no pay and decided to become a killer for hire. If my players are reading this, perhaps a more detailed explanation, in your own words, would be better.....

 

So, fellow HEROphilles, what now? How would you run a supervillian campaign. Ideas are welcome here, but I would prefer that you email them to me, since my players read these boards. Thanks in advance!

 

p.s. Villians have a lot more enemies than heroes......

Personally, I think that your gaming group has issues with the campaign. Perhaps it is time to find out what they like and don't like about the campaign, so that you can fix the issues. If the players aren't having fun and you aren't having fun then you have things to work out. Perhaps some endorsement contracts for the PCs for that money and some licencing as well.

Does your Stronghold have a "Revolving Door" policy for "cool" villians? It is quite frustrating to defeat a villian to have them walk on a technicality or from some other off screen excuse. It is OK to sometimes spring a villian, but leave defeated villians defeated for a few story arcs. Then when they strike from inside of Stronghold you won't have players/characters wondering why they bother not killing the villians.

I wouldn't ever run a SuperVillians game. I would restart the game with new characters and use the old characters as NPCs that the players have to hunt down.

Tasha

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft

This is a poretty good 4th edition writeup. I'm hoping Michael will revise this particular section for the 5th Edition rules or for the standards of Fantasy HERO as it is wirtten now.

 

In the Slayers world, several different peopl learn (or try to learn) the Dragon Slave. It's a wonder there are any villages left. Lina Inverse is so good at it that she doesn;t always need the full incantation (if she;s angry enough).

 

It's not just Dragon Slave I'm curious about, though. I'm curious about the spell that i call, for lack of a better name, Here, Fishy Fishy Fishy . This is the spell Lina uses to call the fish in a body of water and get them to bite on her hook, and has the material compnent that she usually makes the line out a strand of her own hair. A trivial spell by Slayers standards, but instant death if you happen to be a trout. Lina can catch an astounding number of fish with one casting (of the spell, not the line).

For the fishing spell how about a Summon that has the Slavishly Devoted Advantage on it. You could even expand the class of Fish that it will summon. In case you get sick of eating trout.

A fish wouldn't cost very much so the Summons would be really cheap. About 1 point or so, unless you want to summon sharks or Marlin, then the cost is higher.

Tasha

Princess Starfire: She would be really annoyed that someone cut her hand off. Then she would have to deal with the fact that she wasn't the real Princess. She would of course make sure that she was 100% robotic. If so, she would then go looking for the real Princess as she would obviously be a decoy who forgot her programing. She would also look into whether or not there WAS a real Princess Starfire or if that was an implanted memory. She would then check all of her past and really dig to find all of the "secret" government files on her. All to make sure of her past. It would also explain her interest in AI.

Fury: It would explain Mechanon's obsession with her. She would also go into reserach mode to find out if her Father built her or just found her. She would also do lots of soulsearching to understand if her motivations are caused by life experiences or by pre-programing (kind of Nurture vs Nature on an AI scale). She would become more solitary and less likely to want companionship, until she had this figured out. This would also make her guilt over the deaths of her parents and their teemmates even harder to bear.

Tasha

Re: no comparison

Originally posted by Tech

For my money as a GM, normal attacks are better. I still haven't forgetten the GM'ing nightmare which lasted a little over a year where I kept rolling 1's or 2's (ending up as a 1) on the Stun multiplier. (shivers) Okay, I did roll a few more than a 1 or 2 but I just have to groan when rolling a KA and they know what happened. I even changed a few KA's over to normal attacks because of it.

That reminds me of a champions game way back. I was playing the team's brick and she had 15 points of armor as her only resistant defences. She had taken all but about 5 of her body from an attack taken out of hero ID so she was in bad shape. She was left fighting this guy with claws and the GM rolls his biggest attack. I can't believe this attack.. get ready... 10d6HKA. I did the simple math in my head. On an average roll my character was just plain dead. I shook my head and was really annoyed and handed the GM my character sheet. He shook his head and insisted on rolling. He rolled like 25 body and 25 stun. My character took 10 body and 10 stun. All from this fearsome attack. The stun lotto wasn't working for the GM that day. Of course he could never roll well to save his life.

Tasha

PS I would rather have a Normal attack in most situations. Just think if the attack had been a 30d6 HA 105 stun average with 30 body average. My character would have been in GM's option for awhile.

This is why I ALWAYS have my Egoists have a Dex and Ego that are the same value. That way there is no wierdness on the speed chart. Besides DCV is always useful. And ECV's on most characters usually hover around 4 anyways.

Tasha

Originally posted by nlubofsky

Am I the only GM in the world that runs Champions battles with miniature figures?

 

Just curious.

Nick

Nope, I use minis in my games. I even make sure that everyone has their own figure. I haven't found software that is easy to use for making maps. So I end up drawing things out on a Mega-mat.

Tasha

Hand-held computing devices- up to and including hand-held AI devices (like Box from StarCops). AIs and computers need more coverage in a book soon.

Tasha

Re: 10. Curiosity – Why An 8-point Combat Skill Level

Originally posted by MistWing

This is more of a ‘curiosity’ type question. I was going through the Heroes book and read the section on Combat Skill Levels. It occurred to me that the 8-point CSL seemed odd (not that I ever use it). Why 8 points?

 

An 8 point CSL gives you +1 OCV OR +1 DCV, determined at the start of your phase. For 1 more point, you get +1 OCV AND +1 DCV, all the time. Plus you might get a +1 bonus to all of your Dex-rolls. Plus, for either +0 or +1 points, you get a +1 to your SPD.

 

Given all this, I was wondering why an 8-point CSL exists? BTW: This is just curiosity. Like I said, I never use the 8-point CSL. I use either 3-point skill levels (for one power) or 10-point skill levels (for everything).

 

Thanks

MistWing SilverTail

It exists for people like me who don't want a character who has a +1 with everything. It gives me the ability to build the character I want instead of a character dictated by what is more "Cost effective". For different characters I use different level costs based on what they know. ie Perhaps I am running a character who is a combat expert but not one who is good at every thing she does. Also some GMs don't allow 10pt levels. These GMs believe that Overall levels are too powerful for the cost.

Tasha

I fear Egoists most. They are the ones that can make you attack your teammates or your teammates attack you. I hate it when I am not in complete control.

Drainers can be annoying, but it is just a different kind of damage.

Both kind of characters get my biggest and best attacks to take them out quickly before they do even more damage to the team.

Tasha

Re: Re: Re: Not Overpriced

Originally posted by Keneton

 

Strength does not allow you to.

1. Block at range.

2. Avoid all grab penalties.

3.Use martial arts on a guy 200"away.

4. Attack through your own forcewall.

5. Hit the character in the car without hitting the car.

6. Choke the driver of a mech without the mech's defenses.

etc...

 

I stand by my original conclusion and thank you for your thoughts.

1) P 137 FReD states that "Other than Grab and "punch" (Strike) a character cannot use TK to perform any other Combat Maneuvers. It does go on to state that at "GM's Option" that it is possible to use maneuvers that the character paid for (ie Martial Arts Maneuvers) So in many campaigns this wouldn't be true.

2) True

3) See #1 this is at GM's option only

4) True

5) Open to interpretation, but yes if the TK character can see the Driver of the car then they could be attacked through the windshield of the car

6) I would personally rule that this one is more of a suit of armor than a vehicle. It could also run into the can't see the pilot then can't use TK rule. Also see above again for using Maneuvers with TK

Tasha

If you want Magic Res D&D style then Supress and Damage Reduction doesn't cut it. In D&D it is an all or nothing sort of thing. So IF I were going to right up MR then I would do it this way.

8d6 Dispel Magic

0 End

Persistant

Continuous

0 Range,

Self Only

It's kind of expensive, but it does give the feel of D&D style all or nothing MR. I kept the dice down to make it less of a sure thing against 30pt effects. If your campaign has higher power levels or your critter has higher MR then up the Dispel dice accordingly.

Tasha

Re: DeMunkining Forgotten Realms

Originally posted by Mike Basinger

I plan to start running a Fantasy Hero for a local gaming club. To attract new players from D&D, I'm going to use Forgotten Realms as my game world.

 

For the record, I like Forgottem Realms, but I think it has gotten to high powered/munkin over the years.

 

What suggestions do you have to de-munkin the Forgotten Realms. Here is what I have so far:

 

1. 80% less drow , and no drow player characters.

2. Eleminster should be de-powered and not common NPC.

3. No gods walking around.

 

Any other ideas?

 

Mike

I currently run a Forgotten realms Game. I run it using D&D as I cannot get my group to use FH.

I can understand that you are sick of Drizzt clones, but it can be fun to break Stereotypes by playing heroic Dark Elves. Just tell the players that they can't have any of the special abilities besides the Darkvision. It was a part of Drow lore that they lost their powers when away from the Underdark.

I take the 7 Sisters and Elminster and just assume that their Attension is elsewhere. There are rumors of what they are doing, but no one ever sees them. They are like the President, you may be lucky to see him in your lifetime, but it is possible that you would never see him in person.

BTW the gods haven't walked Faerun in years, so there is little chance of the players feeling left out.

I love running the Realms they have lots of detail and humanity. Faerun does have some capacity for munchkinism, but like many games that depends mostly on the players and GM. I don't believe that it is built into the world. Remember in the books we are always seeing the view point of the PCs and their supporting characters, not the regular people.

Just my 2c

Tasha

Re: Re: Fry's good service!?

Originally posted by MarkusDark

For what it is worth,

 

I will toot the horn of my friends comic/RPG/game center FLGS of Distant Realms in Fremont (about two blocks from Senario Games on Fremont Avenue in the Alder Shopping Center). My friend is very much into customer service, documentation and running things like a business. I watch as the store workers go wide eyed at all of the paperwork they need to do sometimes but when it comes to a question from a customer, an answer is just two mouse-clicks away.

 

They have been musing over the idea of opening more stores in other areas and, if it happens, at least the Bay Area will have some more professionally run gaming stores.

 

Okey, tooting over.

Toot away, They are a great store. The service is top notch.

Tasha

Originally posted by Catseye

Um, not being from around here I think Steve missed the gag.

 

In the SF bay area Fry's is notorious for bad service.

(Try Googling for "I Hate Frys" Steve, there are whoel web pages devoted to the subject.)

 

Suggesting that someone needs to work to get to Fry's level of service, at least around here, is a true insult.

 

Catseye

While WAY out of date this is my favorite Fry's article.

http://www.gshotts.com/HUMOR/BreakfastAtFrys/breakfas.htm

Since that was written, the Sunnyvale Frys moved about 4blocks away and now has a Museum of Technology motif and the Fremont Frys has moved under some scary, big, buzzing high voltage backbone towers. It's motif is Electricity, of course.

Here in the Bay Area Frys is renouned for their attension to Ad errors, Long lines, and Clueless Salespeople who ignore you.

Tasha

Originally posted by needo

Well, I threw my two cents in... if only it was that cheap. I bought FREd, Champions, and UNTIL Superpowers Database. My girlfriend even bought me one. Im only 20 pages in to FREd and I've flipped through the other two books.

 

All I can say is "Wow." I can't wait to GM this game. I already have a couple post-apocolyptic Superhero ideas involving ghouls, ghosts, and zombies.

 

It's a good thing I have three weeks before I will have a chance to GM the game. It will take me a bit to go through all this material.

 

As I have never GM'ed before does any one have any hints, tips, etc?

 

Thanks!

I recommend starting slow. I would suggest taking a character out of the Champions source book (Ironclad pg 184 is good) and run some battles slowly exploring the different maneuvers. Looking up all of his powers and seeing how they work. I would then mix it up playing different members of the champions against each other seeing how their powers work. Then after you have played in a few battles, then I would attack the character generation rules. Again the Champions are great for figuring out power levels and what powers go together. Don't worry about making complex characters, that will come with experience with the system.

Welcome to the Hero System!

Tasha

Originally posted by Agent X

CNM left me cold. 1st Person Narrative just isn't enough.

The series as a whole really made me want to run it. It really brought me back into gaming after not doing it for 4 years after a messy game group breakup. I ran a game that brought together people who hadn't played any form of hero for that whole time. They loved the new setting so well they suprised me by demanding that I run it using Fuzion. We ended up bending Fuzion some so that we could build more complex characters. It was fun.

The book that made me fall in love with CNM was Alliances. That was the book that brought it all together for me. Villians that were just so much cardboard in 1-4 ed Hero were suddenly brought into 3 dimensions. I could understand their motivations, I could see how the characters thought.

You are right 1st person narrative isn't enough, there has to be good material there as well.

The funny thing about CNM is that it seems that Marvel has caught up to it with it's Untimate series. The whole Reinterpret all of the characters, Blow up something that is a fixture of the game world. Have many heroes and villains that you don't like be in the blast. If you need them to come back write a good backstory about how they escaped the disaster.

When I finally run again, I will probably use CNM. With the "official" Champions campaign city being Detroit, I just don't see being comfortable running a game in a place that I have no real context. Running in the Bay Area, gives me home field advantage. I understand how the Bay Area works.

I also enjoyed many of the characters in CNM. I kind of found Team Defender somewhat annoying, but still a real inventive concept. It was also jarring having him be such a novice after being used to him being competent in 4th ed. I liked Quantum from that book more as well she felt more 3D with a better background. BTW the Comics inside of CNM (1ed Hardbound limited ED) make it quite clear that she is African-American. She may be blonde, but her skin is dark.

Behemoth was a neat brick/metamorph. The kind of person who is always fighting their nature to do the right thing.

Solitare. Not a girl anymore, but a competent woman. And no silly widget kludgy focus excuse.

Seeker: now more gritty and not a punching bag. Looks really tough. What the 4th ed Seeker should have been from the start.

Re: curious

Originally posted by Hermit

Anyone else find themselves wishing we had a bit of Fiction staring the 5th Ed champs so we could get to know them better? Except for maybe the Showdown with SAS, I don't think it's going to happen... but you never know.

Actually I suggest just this when the Champions universe was in the being thought of stage. IMHO the current characters feel cold. The CNM versions had more heart due to the fiction in all of the books. I especially liked the bios that were written in character. They really made the characters feel real to me. In CNM allies they took villians that I always thought of as lack luster and through the biographys made them living characters. I guess that shows that 1st person narritive is much more powerful than 3rd person narrative.

tasha

Re: Re: Just give guidelines

Originally posted by Old Man

To each his own, but what you describe sounds a lot more like a Champions game with a thin fantasy veneer than a FH campaign. The heroism of the usual fantasy hero stems more from wits and bravery than from some freak accident that makes them Like Unto Gods when compared with their peers.

 

To put it another way, the 'feel' of a fantasy campaign includes only a few heroic 'origins'--the ability to work spells, being a member of a neat demihuman race, divine providence, or just being really skilled at a few things. When you start combining these you start breaking out of the milieu--Frodo is believable as a hardheaded halfling, but if he were a hardheaded halfling with the strength of four Men because he happened to drink an ent potion once, you are fraying the rope from which you are suspending my disbelief.

 

To say nothing of the opportunities afforded to the munchkin. Hmm, if I run a halfling I get an extra 3 DCV, and I can still make him 20 STR such that my damage is as high as it can be before I run into the NCM penalties...

I guess what I am trying to say is that there are many different approaches to fantasy. My FH games have never felt like champions games set in a low tech past with magic. Again, many players are coming into this game from playing D&D. That is nothing new D&D is the breeding ground for Hero players. I have found however that it is quite a culture shock to go from a game that will let you have your pick from hundreds of spells that you can cast a few times a day to a Game system that allows you a few spells that you can cast as often as you have end. Now with 3rd Ed D&D you have players that want to have their characters do all sort of wild things. So, I am finding it more interesting to go with that flow. I also like to make characters that break stereotypes. So, I let my players have fun and blaze new trails.

Even without NCM penalties, that dex 20/str 20 halfling will have spent a lot of points on her stats. That is 6-7 points that they could have spent on skills. I tend to run a talking heads heavy game. There is combat, but I really enjoy character interactions. Having a deep skill list is a real plus in my games. Also, if I had a player who wanted to run a character like that, I would talk to them and see if they would pick one niche or the other. I think that Speed and Dex inflation comes more from the GM not making sure that the players have good solid niches than anything else. Unusual characters make it easy to come up with a hook early in the character's life. If I have the 30 str/20 int Ogre, what would she be like. How would others have treated her when she was young?

I still say having good guidelines are better than NCM. I would rather have that than concrete limits with penalties for going over the limit. I would like to think that my players are grown up enough to make decent characters that are fairly balanced. They also know that I look over every character and will strongly suggest changes that need to be made to an unbalanced character.

There has always been an issue with races and NCM. The bestiary doesn't make the animals take NCM. It seems like a strange thing to make a PC Awakened Dire Wolf take NCM when the NPC one will not. It is consistancy, that is why the 5th edition was originally needed. To provide a consistancy to the rules that was not really there in 4th edition. It is really like the "Special" rule on healing as it applies to Regeneration. I hate exceptions, they make for a more confusing rule set.

Tasha

Just give guidelines

I sometimes really hate this "you have to justify everything your character has with story" mentality that some people have. Hell, if I want to run a 20 str Hobbit Barbarian. If it's fun, why not? Sure it can be fun to come up with excuses for excessive stats, but it shouldn't be required. Not everyone likes that style of play.

BTW many people come to this game system from D&D where at 1st level you can have a 16 str Halfling/hobbit. I always tell my players that I love Hero because we can make any kind of character we want. Here is one way that we artificially limit that creativity. Just let the player have fun making the character she has always wanted ot play.

I just usually give guidelines with the average and the highest ever seen for that race. If someone wants to play a high stat character, fine. Just make sure that the character has some skills or she will feel really left out when we are not fighting something. If there is a skill for it and your haven't purchased it, it doesn't matter how high your stat is. Your roll is 8- at best

I have always run with NCM, but keeping the points given at character creation and experience low you shouldn't have much of a problem with running without.

GM participation in character creation is the best way to prevent unbalanced characters from slipping through.

Tasha

Originally posted by tesuji

Still, to stay on point, it seems like a power "whose nature is obvious only after its too late to abort" has an inherent advantage of reasonable and palpable proportions over a power "whose nature is obvious when there is still time to abort" and IMO if a Gm is going to enforce these and have them play a definitive role IN PLAY then they should not fit within the relatively narrow constraints of FX and should be accounted for.

There is an Advantage that covers that. It is called Invisible Power effects. I would limit is someway so that only the specific power is masked, not the attack streaking to the target.

Tasha

Originally posted by The_Hero

Actually7 I'm waiting to see responses to my character's questions of the group about Pygmalian and the letter she got...

Sorry guy,

I don't really have an opinion about the letter. I wasn't really ignoring you. Please feel free to jump in again. I remember the post, but there have been 133 posts since February. So, please join us. We will get back to the plot line. We just need time to bond as a team.

Tasha/ Fury