bluesguy

In my Valdorian Age campaign there was a dwarf, the only one anyone had seen in forever, who carried a monster axe that he specifically used to destroy shields. I had to look up the DEF/Body for all shields being used in my campaign. So the character's first action after IDing the most dangerous melee opponent and use his axe on that person. He could throw the axe (the character was crazy strong and had bought PSL vs. range with the axe) and aim for the shield. Almost every time the shield was destroyed. Then he would go after that opponent with a sword and put on his shield. I think he had fast draw with those as well. As a GM I allowed it because it was so unique and made for interesting fights. I very much enjoy cinematic fight scenes.

I am currently running a Sunday afternoon role playing game using Epic Table (VTT) and Discord. There are currently four other players and it would be good if there was one or two additional players in the group. Specifics: When: Sunday afternoons from 1pm to 5pm Central Time. 3 to 4 Sundays a month Genre: Fantasy Hero Campaign: Nyonia which is my home brew world and I have been running for a while. The party currently consists of a captain of a ship (think Viking), bard, duelist, and war mage. The party could use a warrior-priest or straight up priest of either Larani or Peoni (which would be more priestly or monk like). Other options are possible but read about the world before you propose them. Please read this information about character creation. What do you need: Decent computer Very good internet connection Headphones/mic for your computer. We have one person who doesn't have this and it does cause problems. If you are interested let me know.

If you are getting the following error that means you are running HCM 1.1.11a and it has the wrong Combat Record export files which you used to export your characters from Hero Designer to be used by HCM. If you are using the HCM 1.1.11b (at this time the latest version) you shouldn't have the above problem. You can either download the new version of HCM or you can go to this link and download a zip which has the HCM export files you need. Sorry about that folks.

Here are a couple of additional resources: Killer Shrike's site with a number of fully laid out magic systems - This site provides a number of really good options for magic systems that are not DnD like. He also provides a way to create a DnD magic system using Hero. Valdorian Age - 5e setting book has a unique magic system based on 'favors' that spell casters have to make with their patron deity/demon/otherworldly source Narosia Sea of Tears - 6e has a unique magic system divided between arcane and divine

Hi, Glad you joined us. First of all I think you are asking some very good questions about how to balance a custom magic system. I did this when I created my campaign world of Nyonia. Here are the questions I asked myself about magic in Nyonia: How 'magical' is Nyonia? I wanted a world where magic was unique and not rare. This drove a decision that anyone could learn some magic. How 'unique' is magic in Nyonia? One thing wanted to avoid is the 'generic wizard'. To handle this I decided (GM fiat back filled with in world logic later) that each race and culture would have a unique kind of magic. Once you started to learn magic from your race or culture that was the only kind of magic you could learn. So some cultures are very nature oriented and have a lot of nature oriented spells. Other cultures are more interested in commerce and so they have a number of spells which increase their ability to sell things for a profit and buy things on the cheap. One culture and 'bottle magic' - basically they can create potions and some limited magical devices/items. Another culture can enhance and dispel magic. One culture is known for their battle magic (think lightning bolts and fireballs and other big effect spells - downside is that if you ask them to take out the guy in the middle of the village they will tell you - no problem you don't mind if the village is on fire afterwards). A couple of cultures have enhancements that make warriors even more powerful. How powerful can a mage be in Nyonia? I decided to divide magical ability into two types of people. Anyone can learn a few spells (see #2 for culture/race limitation). This is all based on the idea that anyone can learn to play a guitar (believe I taught myself at the age of 30), but you won't ever be a world renowned guitarist. These kinds of mages have a decent possibility of having spells fail during casting and causing the caster problems. They are limited in the maximum active points per spell. No spell can be in a power framework (Multipower or Variable Power Pool). Bunch of other limitations. OR People born with a talent for magic. These are the people who have a natural ability to do magic. They have a large VPP and they know all the spells available to their race/culture (see #2). The spells can be at a higher active point level. If they fail their spell roll bad things don't happen besides a missed roll. Magic items - Aside from potions/scrolls, magic items are rare. One of things I did was buy as many of the Hero Spell books as I could afford at the time (and the Hero Designer files to help managing spell 'books' per race). I ended up getting Fantasy Hero Grimoire and Fantasy Hero Grimoire II (both 5th edition but easily converted to 6th edition). I then build each races/cultures spells from the spells I found in those books. Over time I have bought more Hero 'spell books' and expanded the options for each race/culture. The end results can be found here: Nyonian Magic - This is world view of magic Hero mechanics around Nyonia Magic Everyone in my game knows that as the GM I can adjust any aspect of the game (magic, racial templates) whenever something seems unbalanced. My next post will point you to some additional resources and ideas on how to handle this.

You know what I can't see it either at this point. Hmm. That looks like a defect.

Mages in my world don't have END Reserves. I would consider a Staff that had an Aid to END and/or REC that worked on charges (maybe 4 to 8 ) where the charges would recharge slowly, recharging one charge per week. That way the mage only uses the staff when they really think they will need it.

This thread really belongs in the general "Hero System Discussion" subforum.

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In my Nyonia campaign magic items fall into a few categories: Potions/Scrolls - 1 time use; Uncommon Items with charges - The charges tend to be use and lose type. Although I have considered making a few where the item recharges very slowly (1 charge per week or month) or with some difficulty (dang where did I put my solar to magic wand recharger ?) - Rare Permanent items with no charges (weapons, armor, etc.) - Extremely rare/unique There are no 'magic shops' in my world. There are alchemists who can make potions in many major cities. There is only one school of magic capable of making magic items. Any magic in an item has to be based on an existing spell within the campaign. On the other hand there are schools of magic which can enhance a weapon for a period of time, thereby making it a magic weapon for a short period of time (minutes). So in my world the answer would be no a beginning character can not spend XP to have a 'magic item'.

I did something like this a while back. I was running the game as part of International Gaming day. Premise: Everything should have a recognizable Minnesota flavor since that is where I live and all the players would be from. Characters: A variety of characters so people can choose. All the characters already had their powers and the backgrounds were explained to the players at the start of the game. Paul Bunyan - Find a magic Axe and become Paul Bunyan. Very tall and strong. Taconite - Iron miner falls into vat of taconite and should have died but instead took on the characteristics of taconite (steel). Classic brick in every sense of the word. Grey Wolf - Martial artist (built as a multipower to make it simple) who is a member of Lakota tribe Wind Hammer - A Valkyrie - kind of a Thor look alike. Wind powers + flight + big ass hammer to smash folks with Slapshot - Mutant with ice powers and she can move like crazy across ice (MN you know) The Mosquito - Power armor shrinking + blasters but no range (gotta to fly up to their opponent and blast them in the ear or some other spot) The Purple One - Mutant who can use sound to blast people (AoE) and also a very simple mind control (Party like its 1999 - forces people to dance) Plot: Quick character background Role playing while at casino Fireball event Rush to the scene (arriving in waves) Put out brush and forest fire Aliens troops show up and attack Take out troops Two supervillains show up and attack Defeat everyone and capture them Smile for the media :-) Scenario: The characters don't know each other but have heard about each other - except for Paul Bunyan and Taconite (if they are picked) because they operate in the same parts of northern MN. Everyone is at a northern MN casino when a huge fireball, flying in a straight line, crashes outside of town. The fireball is a damage space ship, modeled after the Chitauri from the Avengers movie. The main opposition was Chitauri warriors some on the ground and some flying (I think there were 2 to 3 per PC). After dealing with them two mid-level supervillains also get involved. Everyone shows up in waves and it is a battle royal. One of my friends made custom character sheets to make it easier for the players. I pre-made a giant speed chart and used sticky notes to indicate who would go when. I also had a battle mat + figures/paper minis (Paul Bunyan was a metal frost giant) + 3d terrain - I mean what good is it to have characters who can pick up trees and use them like baseball bats if you can't see characters pick up trees and use them like baseball bats.

How to manage a Campaign World I want to caveat that I mostly run fantasy games. I only run superhero level games as fill ins and they are extremely episodic. Organizing the Information I have managed a few campaign worlds in the 30 odd years I have been running games. Back in the day I used 3 ring binders and a bunch of notes. I would sometimes type them up on my Apple and print them on a dot matrix printer but mostly they were hand written. It mostly worked. When I came back to gaming a few years ago I discovered the Obsidian Portal (I even backed their Kickstarter project) which I used for a number of campaigns. It has a number of very nice features and you can organize your game pretty easily on the site. I moved away from that platform after many years of waiting for the Kickstarter work to be completed, multiple owner transfers and the general slow software death of the site. It is still usable but I became concerned that one day it would be gone and all my data would be gone as well. Now I use a Joomla website that I set up myself and a bunch of plugins and modules. I have had to do minimal coding (<50 lines of php) and some css tweaking (~100 lines). The result is Nyonia - The Celestial Jewels which is my campaign world. Managing the Campaign World There are whole books on this topic. I would highly recommend the following book from Gnome Stew Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign because it describes the process of starting, managing and ending a campaign. The book tends to use a description of a technique that can be used and then uses a fictional gaming group going through the technique. Because they use the same fictional gaming group you can see the evolution of the campaign throughout the book. I have three blogs on what I did to get started which you can find here.

I think there are a number of subtopics that could spin off from this thread: How to manage a campaign (and maybe even a campaign world that has multiple campaigns in it)? How to manage an adventure? How to manage a session w/in an adventure? How to manage combat?

You may or may not remember this long thread Experiences Teaching People Hero Game System but there are a number of useful ideas in that thread.

Bump

I was going to report the same issue on my iPad.

Real Pirates Pirate ship & crew generator - Which looks pretty cool Real Pirate Ship names As for the actual characters from the franchise I will be interested in seeing what you get.

Yes I did do the clear. I will delete all the files on the iPad and copy them again from my Google Drive to the iPad. At one point it did work on the iPad. Android + Google Drive works fine.

You might also look into DramaScape maps. You can print them out and 'tape' them together using a regular B&W printer or color printer. If you think you will use them over and over again then printing them onto card stock and using 'self-laminating' material is useful

When I try and load a character sheet using the iOS version on my iPad the application closes itself. When I load the same character sheet using the Android version it works. Also this happens if I am loading from my Google Drive (both apps) or if I copy the file from Google Drive to local storage on my iPad. Any ideas?

Thank you for buying HCM. I appreciate it. I would recommend only exporting the characters you need as you need them. Every time I do a new release you will probably have to regenerate the export files.

I have a domain as well and my knowledge of client/server apps is ancient. I was thinking more along the lines of each HCM would act as a local server and people would connect within a LAN vs all over the net. HCM grew out of my need to manage the bookkeeping surrounding Hero combat, especially large groups of combatants. The one ask since I put out HCM is a tool for players to use on a tablet and/or HCM to run on a tablet. I think your application can fit the 1st niche really well. HCM will not be ported to a tablet anytime soon, if ever.

I am assuming you are trying to create an application for a player to use on their tablet or smartphone. Just getting a 'smart character' sheet to work as an application is going to be a pretty big project. Additional Features: Amount of detail: One thing that would be helpful is to have a way to 'strip' out a bunch of the details in the powers/equipment. For instance right now the application shows all of the following: Ainu Full Body Armor (from Scales): Resistant Protection (4 PD/ED) (12 Active Points), Normal Mass (-1), Extra Time (1 Minute, Only to Activate, Character May Take No Other Actions, It takes time to put on the armor; -1), OIF (-1/2), Real Armor (-1/4) IMO it would be more useful to only have the following: Ainu Full Body Armor: Resistant Protection (4 PD/ED) - and if the user touches the item then it opens up the detail Select an attack power/equipment If the user selects a power/equipment that is an attack then the damage dice should be populated and then the player can make some change the options or just roll the dice. Enter damage taken When the character is hit it would be useful to allow the player to enter the type of damage (mental, presence, transfer, entangle, flash, normal, killing); defense type; and applying that information against the character's current characteristics. Then updating the state of the character - stunned; knocked out; knocked down/back; etc. An application that could do all of the above would compliment the HCM very nicely. Maybe we can figure out a way to integrate a messaging service so HCM could send info to an Hero System Mobile app and get data back.