dstarfire

Re: Bardic Magic Just as side note: Why is it that almost every fantasy game/genre limits music/song based magic to morale/charm/mind based effects? Why aren't other spells ever cast as songs? I think it'd be a natural extension of the incantations and gestures of other schools of magic. Incidentally, the one example I've seen of a magic system that doesn't limit song-based magic this way was the Death Gate cycle by Margaret Weiss. Anyways, just a thought.

Re: Triggers? The trigger would NOT be optional. Whenever the condition matches the trigger, the power activates (whether the player wants it to or not). Additionally, the player can activate the power at their discretion. If it occurred only when the trigger occurred, that'd be an example of the "no conscious control" limitation which described a power that is only activated when some external event triggers it.

According to the fred, to take the skill "Transport familiarity: carts and wagons", you also have to purchase riding. Is riding still required if you take the skill combat driving, and select "tf: carts and wagons" as your free TF, do you still have to pay for riding? What about a character who (for some odd reason) builds a cart/wagon with character points? Can I go the easy route and just take "tf: land vehicle" from sidekick, or is that not available since we're using the full version of hero?

Re: Using Images to Change Environment? I tend to favor CE for light over images, though more because generalising a power as (another power + limitation/s) basically cripples that power due to all the other factors that are based on a powers active point cost. i.e. filling a hex with light is just as tiring (end cost), just as difficult (skill roll penalty) as filling that hex with an actual visual illusion. Not to mention that this approach puts you that much closer to the AP limit. *goes into meaningless rant about active point system

Re: Sand Powers How about some sort of invisibility in sandy, aquatic, or other appropriate environments? It's rather hard to tell one bit of sand from another.

Re: DEX vs. CSLs Dex and CSL's each have their place. CSL's add a LOT more flexibility to nehancing your fighting style. Also, 2 5-point csl's can give you +2 ocv with all hth or all ranged for a measly 10 pts. It's far cheaper too boost just the few things you use all the time, rather than buying straight dex to boost everything

Re: Speed Typing I think the UNTIL book had an entry under speedster powers for super-speed tasks.

I'd say make it an OIF, and allow characters that have lost their tattoos to have them fixed/repaired easier than they are to make. . Otherwise, just go with the standard independent. The reason it's worth so much as a limitation is because characters can lose all the points without getting anythign in return. The fact that it can'ty be used against them doesen't make it worth that much less. It's pretty heinous to have 5-10 pts just disappear forever, just because you got unlucky. That risk is easily worth a -2.

The additive/subtractive magic system would be easy to do in hero, as they'd be defined just as power sfx. However, a few powers would be only additive (aid, healing), or only subtractive (suppress). I'd develop a good selection of sample "spells" for the different magic types (additive, subtractive, sorceress, wizard) to establish what's what. I'd be interested to see your ideas of how to work out the sword of truth itself.

This sounds more like a Variable power pool, or an elemental control, than a single power to me. Fire powers, ice powers, plant powers, ... plague powers As for turning on/off remotely, that would require (both for game mechanics, and for sfx mechanics) some sort of mind link-ish thing.

When I first started playing a spell caster, rsr didn't seem that bad. When you've got a faith of 16, even a -4 penalty isn't that devestating. Then somebody had to mention that "ego + 1" means ego ROLL + 1, not just ego characteristic, as I though. Once I relized that, I started buying off all my rsr limitations. It's heineious for powerful spells, especially since I have the worst luck with dice (always seem to roll high for skill/atk rolls and low for dmg rolls). I'd rather take double end, or even concentration rather than rsr. at least with those I know casting a spell's going to be worth the time and effort.

simple solutions Actually, the base SE limitation only happens when you fail your skill roll. If it happens every time you use the power, that's worth a bit more. As for the rest, remember the golden rule of gaming: every "rule" is just a suggestion. If you don't like the way SE works, allow defenses to be applied, and have the effects recover at whatever rate is appropriate for the power. If you're not the GM, talk to him about how to make it work. Remember, GM's usually respond by the next gaming session, game system publishers MIGHT respond in the next edition (which is usually months or years away).

Try damage reduction (by breaking into blocks, he takes less dmg from attacks, but still takes some dmg), with an activation roll, or some variation thereof. This is one of those cases where a "less time" advantage would be really helpful. Unfortunately, you can only add time to a power, not lessen it. Hopefully a later edition of hero will incorporate the idea of equal opposites.

One thing I find totally obnoxious about speed, is that higher speed characters ALWAYS go before lower speed characters. How often you go should be seperate from when you go. I almost discarded my cleric that was basically an undead-annihilating tank (he's also pretty decent in normal combat) because my spd was 1 lower than all but one other player. Almost always, by the time I got to go, all the enemies had been killed. Unless I got in a solid hit on my first attack, I spent the whole combat twiddling my thumbs. Spd

hmmm, it appears that it's merely my imagination that was lacking. I'd never think of doing "a ladies man" as a vulerability. When I was reading through the descriptions of the disadvantages, a lot of them sounded fairly specific. For example social reads like variations of "a shady past", and nothing more. Reputation sounded like "known troublemaker", said specifically it referred to negative reputations only. I don't remember seeing the watched one anywhere, and how do you do dependent NPC's that don't travel with you? Still, I really like the idea of breaking psych into 3 categories. At the very least, codes of conduct needs to be it's own seperate category. Thanks for the helpful feedback all.

I remember something my old gaming group used to do that I thought was really cool: if a player did something that made everybody laugh or otherwise added significantly to the entertainment of the group, they'd get a small xp reward on the spot. Likewise when a player showed unusual integrity (taking a penalty the gm forgot about, for example). Another cool tradition I really liked was the "best player award". Each session the group would vote on who had roleplayed the best, been the most helpful, etc, and that person would get a bonus xp award. Many times this went to a normally mediocre player that had done far better than usual. Really encouraged people to put a lot of effort into roleplaying well, which made the games much more fun.

you don't need another advantage to use a power with a trigger. Trigger is an advantage, it gives you more options, not less. If a power occurrs ONLY when the trigger is activated, that'd be a limitation. I don't see any reason why a player couldn't turn a trigger off. Again, that'd be a limitation (no conscious control comes to mind). However, there are many effects simulated by a power and trigger combination where it doesn't make sense to disable the trigger, or activate it manually. That's up to the player and GM to work out. Since you sound relatively intelligent, I assume you follow common sense rather than the rules.

ways to remove spd If you don't want to mess around with the spd stat, steal the method from palladium: rather than going phase-dex, just let each player have a number of actions each turn equal to how many phases they'd normally get to go on. just keep going through the combat order, and if a player still has actions left on when their time comes up, they can go. The downside to this approach is that a group of players suddenly becomes equal to even the fastest of npc, but that can be fixed with some minor tweaking.

sidetracked If you want to argue the value of the end system, start a thread for that. Or, better yet, take it to a private forum, since it seems to be just 3-4 people arguing about it. This is supposed to be what features of hero we find most annoying. I'll lead the way by mentioning some more of my pet peeves. The thing that bugs me most about hero is the way it seems to be designed for munckins and power gamers. Almost all the powers have annoying limitations built in just to stop people from pulling cheap tricks. The system is balanced for mechanics, but seriously screwed up for thematic balance. Powers should have an opposite/inverse that costs functions identically to it's counterpart and for the same cost but in reverse. While this wouldn't make sense for a lot of powers, it would for most. In the few cases where hero has a counterpart for a power it always has a totally different cost and mechanic. It's almost always cheaper to hurt somebody (or their stats/powers) than it is to heal or even increase them.

But getting 2/3 of disad's from just one source when there's so much else to choose from? Why? Because: 1. all the other categories are very specific compared to psychological. I mean there's 2 different categories for "somebody doesn't like me" (hunted and rivalry), a missing limb/ear/eye is both a physical limitation and a DF. 2. There isn't that much else to choose from, unless you want to be a cripple, a social outcast, a berserker, or some such. 3. Most of the become meaningless in rather common situations: social, DF, hunted, reputation, and enraged/berserk usually don't apply when your group's in the wilderness, but psych disads are ALWAYS applicable (unless of course, you're asleep or dead).

1. that depends on the special effects of the power. if it travels in a straight line from sourec to target, then yes. But if it uses a ballistics-style arc (grenade launcher, long-range bow shots, etc.), he'd have to use his reflection at range. 2. I'd say grabbing a player is like drawing a weapon, and say a half phase is fair. However, if the "passenger" co-operates and uses his move to be picked up (basically jumping into the others grasp), then the runner should be able to use his full move. 3. since using a power is normally a zero-phase action (unless they have duration limitations), then they could abort to dodge using teleport. 4. don't know, but sounds fair 5. assuming you're useing the power armor as an focus for the characters other powers: he couldn't dispel the power armor itself since that isn't technically a power. And dispel does indeed dispel any instange/usage of a power permanently (i.e. enchanted items, ongoing spells, etc.). However, it does nothing to rpevent a character from using that power again. That would be suppress. for example, you could dispel the gas cloud caused by a gas grenade, but that won't stop you from throwing another one. If you wanted to interfere with the function of technological devices to prevent characters from using them, you'd take suppress: technology, with the advantage uncontrolled (until repaired), you'd also need the aoe 1 hex advantage to affect all of a characters gadgets/tools. Since power armor is actually a collection of discrete technologies (albeit connected and working together), you'd have to use AoE to suppress all the power armor's systems at once.

Have you looked at no conscious control? From what you're describing that pretty much describes what you're looking for. I'd reduce the value of the limitation somewhat due to the the fact that: while the character can't control whether or not the power activates when the conditions are met, he does have some control over whether or not those conditions are met.

1. If you target the hex, and miss your attack roll, the attack is off by a number of hexes equal to the unmber the missed their attack roll by. for example: if you're attack roll only hits dcv 1, (hex has a base dcv of 3), then your attack hit's a hex 2" away from the target hex. a simple d6 roll can easily determine the direction it misses in. 2. aoe radius, and cone both extend in height the same way they do in width and length. 3. That's up to your gm. Usually you can buy off most limitations, or add advantages. However, they may not allow removing advantages, or adding limitations, unless you can come up with a good reason why your characters' powers suddenly become weaker as for your last question, I have no idea as I've never played arouind with those powers.

I think I must be missing something here, but the psychological class of disadvantage seems WAY too broad to me. It covers: morality and codes of behaviour, a committment to something, personality quirks, emotional trauma, basically aynthing that occurs mostly in the characters mind. Yet all of those things together are only worth about 1/3 of a characters total disadvantages. I think that morals and behavioural codes should at least be a seperate category. This limitation becomes especially obvious when one is creating a knight/paladin/samurai type character, where the pyschological disads can be incredibly harmful (forcing the character to suicidally stupid actions in many cases), and is the primary disadvantage for these types. Seems to me the disadvantages section is still designed mostly for comic-book superheroes, rather than the universal system Hero is supposed to be.

good in theory, but ... I like the idea of making the defendant an active participant in his defense, especially when I'm the defendent. However hero's abort to block/dodge system handles this fairly well. However, if you're set on adding a skill roll to the combat values themselves, I'd replace the fixed 11 in the combat formula with a number derived from the skill roll. You'll have to figure out the actual formula yourself, but, ideally, the result should have a range of 6-16 (50-150% of base 11). grrr, now I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to come up with that formula. input: 3d6 roll skill level output: ~6-16 process: unknown.