bluesguy

I agree that the Valdorian Age could work well for you. I used VA for my last campaign. The city of Elweir is about 70% of the material in the VA book. The book has a bunch of details about local history, characters and where everything fits with the larger world. The book gives a huge number of jump off points for adventures around politics, skulduggery, spying, and even potential 'dungeon' crawling. This is a world where monsters are extremely rare and magic is also rare. My players ran into no more than a dozen monster encounters over 3 years of gaming. Mostly they dealt with human foes.

Once in a while I will have the players roll to see the direction of the missed show and then use the amount they missed by to calculate the distance. But only if it adds to the fun or drama. For instance: Trying to hit a villain who is in a crowd of innocents. And we always do it if someone misses their AoE (which can result in some very funny outcomes) - "Dang I just flashed myself in my 10" Radius Flash"

The goal I had in my campaign is to have a high fantasy campaign (fair amount of magic some it being very powerful), variations on the types of magic, and eliminate 'generic wizards' (everyone has magic missiles, fireballs, etc.). Basic Info: Each culture / race has their own style of magic. You can only learn magic from your culture/race. Magic comes in two varieties, something that anyone can learn (see rule #1) or a natural talent for magic (see rule #1). If a character has a natural talent for magic they can become extremely powerful because their isn't a limit on how powerful their spells can become over time. A person who wants to learn a spell or three is always going be less powerful than a character with the talent. Game Mechanics: Every character that wants to use magic has to buy the Power Skill and it is specific for their culture/race's type of magic. Every character that wants to use magic has to buy some mage skills - some of them are specific for their culture/race 'Non-Talent' mages Learn a set of basic magic spells first - i.e. defensive, movement (if appropriate), and an attack. Are limited to a maximum AP cost (which varies based on culture/race and type of spells - defense/movement/offensive/summon/etc.) Appropriate skill roll: -1 per 5 APs Gestures Incantations Concentration (1/2 DCV) Cost End to cast (At least; all spells cost end) Consumable Focus Side effect – almost always ‘physically injuring’ At least 12 real points spent in magic spells Spells cannot be part of a power framework (Multi-power or Variable Power Pool) Talent mages Talent – Magical Affinity (10 points) - must be bought at character creation Maximum AP is 3x the 'Non-Talent' mages ability Appropriate skill roll: -1 per 20 APs Gestures Incantations Cost End to cast (At least; almost all spells cost at least ½ end) OAF – Staff, Wand, or Rod Must have {Racial/Cultural} Talent Magical Affinity Variable Power Pool (60 point control cost) - must be bought at character creation Here is a link to my Obsidian Portal description. Hope this helps.

Thank you for the feedback....

Chris - That makes sense ...

Does anyone use the "Power skill" as a Brick Trick roll? And if you do what kind of Brick Tricks can the brick do?

He made an excellent villain in my Valdorian Age campaign as the leader of one of the last tribes of orcs.

No player likes being stunned. But I have been in games where a PC will see that another member in the group has been stunned and they will heroically act to save the stunned character. The players like stunning their opponents ... Funny how that works out.

Honestly there isn't any other game system I will play besides Hero. Also http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/89345-experiences-teaching-people-hero-game-system/

Shameless Plug: One of the reasons I created Hero Combat Manager was to help speed up combat/bookkeeping for the GM. General Advice Even so it is important to get people to think ahead when they are playing their characters: Encourage folks to 'pre-roll' prior to their action Encourage folks to roll everything all at once - roll to hit and damage at the same time As a GM I think it is important to KISS when it comes to the opposition: Large number of minions - make them all the same and use the one-hit wonder rule Major bad guys - Give them some flair but still fairly straight forward for their attacks/defenses/tactics Shameless Plug: BTW: Next release of HCM should speed things up considerably by eliminating a large number of 'clicks' in the attack dialog.

I finally read this adventure and I am very impressed with this adventure. I can basically use this adventure as it is with some minor modifications for my own campaign. Good work Christopher.

The Nobles, Knights and Necromancers is full of master villains, organizations and solo villains that are definitely not in the Bestiary. The Monsters, Minions, and Marauders is at home. I will look at it tonight.

I bought it because I knew you wrote it. Funny thing is I haven't opened it yet :-)... Too busy with the holiday weekend and work.

What about if the character is patrolling looking for criminal activity? That probably would be consider vigilante behavior.

I am a simple minded GM so I go with letting the players know that not joining PRIMUS means that they could be put in jail for using their powers in an unregistered manner - that is the stick. The carrot is that PRIMUS helps the players with their base, provides them with first class help in their base, police powers (national - which has never come up) and PRIMUS will cover the cost of repairs from any property damage.

Ok I know you are being serious and I will give a serious answer in a moment but the images I have in my head are old Godzilla movies where Godzilla does some funky little "fight/martial art" moves in the movies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iym8TVQH7hA But seriously you might want to go and look at the Martial Arts book and HD prefab pack.

As a GM I encourage my players to pre-roll their next action (attack, damage, etc) to help speed things up a bit.

Also to help with the 'number crunching' during character creation I would highly recommend getting Hero Designer. Then you don't really have to worry about the math of creating a character.

Oh she is perfectly capable of painting miniatures. And she has made 'mods' to fantasy female characters...

Mark, Brilliant! When you get a chance can you put your spreadsheet up in the downloads area and then provide us with a link.

We were using the original Steve Jackson cardboard heroes. I have a newer group member and he has hundreds of HeroClix so people have picked out characters that work for them out of that set. My daughter still doesn't like the fact that most of the female characters are dressed very scantily... I have a daughter who dresses very modestly.

I would love to play in any campaign you ran Cassandra.

Sweet! I will buy that!

You mean something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rc3jVX6cU2M

Unless you are running a world where magic is 'running out of juice'. One of the premises in the Valdorian Age was that magic was becoming very rare. It had been powerful and widespread but now it was almost considered a myth. People, even well traveled people, might not ever run into a mage. A world like this one a sorcerer (mentalist) is going to be very powerful because no one is expecting those kinds of powers. They aren't expecting magic at all.