bluesguy

Re: Resistance is useless

In 6e Superheroic games Stun Multipliers are d3 (ie 1/2 d6).

Where is that rule at? I don't remember reading it.

Re: "Elevator Pitch" your campaign

I am the GM for two campaigns. The first one is a Silver Age Champions campaign set in our current time frame in the Twin Cities. The heroes came together by accident and are now govt. sponsored. There is Gigavolt - an energy blaster, who can 'fly' along metal items (rail lines, power lines, etc) and teleport from a large metal object to another. There is Azerath who is a mentalist/telekinetic. And there is Penthesilea - a homage to Wonder Woman. They have run into a couple of Marvel and Champions Villains. It is a very episodic campaign (on purpose).

The main campaign is the Valdorian Age - Rising Power on the Frontier a gritty sword and sorcery world where magic is dangerous and rare; and a good blade or bow is a better bet for attacking your opponent. The players have come together to oppose a very powerful mage and his following that came to their continent after being kicked out of the kingdom he came from.

Re: Mega-damage, bit by bit

I am running a pretty low magic campaign and have worked hard to 'manage' the power levels in my campaign. I 'codified' it for my players here. I do have a gritty campaign and so the potential for 'nasty' levels of killing damage is out there. Also the amount of resistant defense is capped at 6 rPD/rED that means characters can take a lot of damage quickly. We also use called shots but we don't use 'random' hit locations. Bad guys generally don't do called shots - but a few do and can.

Re: suggestions for maps, scenery?

I have also purchased Game Mastery Flip mats and Map sets which are both excellent product lines.

Re: Resistance is useless

Thank you for this thread because I didn't realize there had been a change to the way Killing Attacks & normal defenses, w/ regards to Stun, work. Although this has no impact on my fantasy campaign - everyone generally has some level of 'armor' on. But it does affect the program I have been working on.

Re: Bows, Brace, and DCV

One of the characters in my campaign is a master archer. The 1/2 DCV issue rarely comes up because she often fires from cover or is very far away from the HtH combat (lots of penalty skill levels w/ range). The very rare times someone has shot back at her character they have missed by a mile. She also bought Archery Tricks and I think if it was an issue I would just have her try to make an Archery Tricks roll to remove the 1/2 DCV penalty.

Re: That Hellish Thing

Awesome! More please.

Re: The Red Queen Effect and Superhumans

There was a second season episode of STNG that obliquely addressed this point. In the episode' date=' researchers tweaked the genes of some children so that their immune systems would be, in a word: predatory. They would seek out any potential infection and eradicate it, even at a distance. The immunity effects expanded their purview and caused the 'normals' around them to die..... 'airborne'.....[/quote']

 

How about a real world example. The cancer which is wiping out Tasmanian devils is in fact an aggressive cancer that spreads from animal to animal. If your friend has skin cancer and you give them a hug you are not going to get skin cancer. Of course part of the reason this cancer is spreading among the devils is because they bite each other on the face. The other problem is that the genetic diversity of Tasmanian devils is very very low. What the researchers have found is that everyone of the tumors on the different devils has the exact same genetic markers. That also doesn't happen.

Re: Pre Attacks

Sean ... Could you tell us what you really think? Don't hold back this time. .

Re: Pre Attacks

My players use Presence Attacks quite a bit. I actually encourage it. The villains will do the same in return. PRE attacks & soliloquies are where the role-playing comes into the combat IMO.

Re: A spell that acts like a "lightning rod for magic"

Thank you all... Deflection seems to be a good approach. Basically constant, end, side effect is that the Focus (Oak staff w/ ornate carvings/inlays of precious metals) takes the damage from the magic attack, and a couple of other things. This is perfect.

So I am looking at the Arcanomancy spells in the Grimoire II book and there is one spell that I think would be very useful to this type of mage. So a mage, George casts his Rod of Magic spell, which is a constant spell as long as he pays end. Then Tim the Evil Enchanter casts a Fireball at Mary but instead of the fireball flying towards Mary, the fireball turns direction and heads towards George, who has other spells up and running (walls, shields, absorption, suppress, etc) which keeps George from being fried.

The Rod of Magic spell basically causes magic to be attracted to the Rod that George has in his hand.

Any ideas?

Re: Wish List: Other Licensed Content

There are a world of fantasy book series that would make great additions - Sanctuary and the entire Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series. Or Stephen Brust's Vlad series.

Re: Now taking suggestions - HERO System Combat in Two Pages

I want to thank the person who mentioned that I should have asked permission to post that two page. BIG OOPS on my part.

Re: Detailed (mundane) armor

I did play in a Fantasy game - a long time ago - where we went for realism on encumbrance and used sectional armor defenses. And then we also started using hit locations. It did change the dynamic of the game. Players would often target hands, lower legs, and feet - all of which were usually lightly armored - vs chest & head shots.

Re: I could use some ideas for a fantasy campaign.

I could also see the Kronian lords decide that maybe the people who tried to invade might be better allies than enemies....

Re: Now taking suggestions - HERO System Combat in Two Pages

Hi,

I might be able to help. What I did was take the Hero Resource Kit pdf and condense the rules down to 2 pages. This is the absolutely bare minimum necessary for 80% of the players in most games (IMO).

Enjoy...

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

So we'll "mark" you down as Bloat Level: 2

I would like to have what he is having as well:D;)

My only connection with this is that I bought into the first Monster Stock Art & Minis Kickstart effort and I am very glad I did. The minis were very well done.

Anyway here is the link for Monster Stock Art & Minis II Kickstart.

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

Again I go back to my current campaign where there is only one non-human, a dwarf. I have given the player some information about what dwarves are like in this world but I have basically said it is up to him to help flesh it out. Also the other players would like to find out where their friend comes from - the character would like to know that as well but he has been suffering with amnesia for the entire campaign - but that won't happen until I get some help fleshing out dwarven society from the player who wanted to play a dwarf.

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

Like I said earlier' date=' an elf and a dwarf from the same nation are more likely to get along and have things in common than two elves from different nations.[/quote']

 

This does make a lot of sense to me.

Re: Evil

Interesting topic. I like many of the definitions people provided. I went to Wikipedia to see if there was something that could articulate what I was thinking better than I could. I like this item from the Evil entry on Wikipedia.

According to Peck, an evil person:

• Is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection
  
• Deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
  
• Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets, scapegoating others while appearing normal with everyone else ("their insensitivity toward him was selective")
  
• Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others
  
• Abuses political (emotional) power ("the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion")
  
• Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so
  
• Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness)
  
• Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim
  
• Has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury
  

The big distinction that Peck presents is that this description covers those who are NOT sociopaths. Read about "Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs".

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

How do you define "Too Close together"? Heck' date=' if you look at history cities separated by less than a hundred miles have had radically different cultures. Look at Europe and how close everything is together and how many different cultures and languages sprung up there.[/quote']

 

Well those European cities/city states/nations were pretty much all variations of feudal societies. There were at least three languages with a very common root language (French, Spanish, and Italian). At one point in their history they all shared a common religion, theology & doctrine. Later they shared a common religion even if their theology & doctrine changed.

 

Because of the closeness of these places and the decent transportation/communication (see below in a moment) a more homogeneous culture emerged.

 

There were a ton of very different Native American Tribes when the settlers first arrived. Most of those had very different languages and cultures.

 

That is true. I would guess that if you compared Native American Tribes in the north east vs. plains vs. Southwestern portions of the US you would find very different cultures. I lived in New Mexico and got to know the three predominate Native American cultures and they are all different. But if you look at the size of NM & Arizona where Navajo, Zuni and Pueblo that is a lot of 'ground to cover' - on foot. In Europe people had pack animals - horses, mules, oxen and wheeled vehicles. And the ability to travel & communicate allowed for a more homogeneous set of cultures in Europe. But in the new world that wasn't as true.

 

Fantasy races are a great way to explore different cultures in a fairly safe way without seeming to be racist. SciFi Races are similar in this fashion.

 

That is an interesting 'justification' for having a bunch of different 'species' in a campaign. In my campaign we explore 'race' (and racism) because there are clashes of culture between Valdorians, Abyzinians, and Cynthians. They all have their distinct cultures. They are all human.

 

But I digress (and it was fun). You asked

How do you define "Too Close together"?

 

My simple answer is that if I was playing in a campaign world where I could find 6 to 12 distinct species/races (within species) all living within an easy month's travel of each other to be 'too close together'. I don't think they would be very distinct. I think the cultures would evolve into a much more homogeneous culture with 'quirks' between each one.

 

As for multiple intelligent species in the same area - I think the competition for resources would lead to many of those species being wiped out. I would think intelligent species want to preserve themselves and will do whatever is necessary to do that. I would think this would be doubly so if it turns out that two intelligent species can not interbred.

 

So if I was playing an a world roughly the size of Western Europe and there were humans, elves (multiple types), halflings, gnomes, orcs, serpent/lizard people, goblins, dwarves, giants, gnolls, hobgoblins, and ogres - each with very distinct cultures I would wonder if the GM just kept tossing in 'species/races' because they seemed cool without thinking about how it would all work together.

 

Finally I should mention that my first campaign world suffered from my lack of thought on how all the 'species/races' in that world could actually survive.

 

This is what works for me and YMMV

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

Thank you for making sure I'll never set foot in a Valdorian Age setting.

I get that... I bet you only play elves ?

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

I have played in High Fantasy games where their are every known race and culture all pretty much 'slammed together'. My experience is that many new players want to play elves, dwarves, and a few other species because they are 'cool', have interesting abilities or cultural/species quirks. I have also seen this with new GMs as well. I know my first campaign had more than a few species that just didn't make sense. There were also cultures (human and otherwise) that were too close together and didn't make sense.

I like playing humans and I have never wanted to play another race. In fact I have only played one other species - gnome fighter/illusionist. He didn't like 'big people' (bordered on bigotry). His favorite thing to do was go find a roof near a bar and when people came out drunk he would create an illusion of a pink dragon flying by spewing puce colored vomit. He thought that was a riot.

One of the things I like about the Valdorian Age is that humans are the predominate hominid species. There rumors of 'dwarves' and a few gnomes and halflings around but they are rare. As for elves they are the Drindrish and everyone is glad to be rid of them because they left the entire area many years ago.

Everyone in the party is human, except for one dwarf. He gets a fair amount of hassle when he goes into new areas because people don't have a clue what he is. And he doesn't even know where he came from because he has amnesia . When people asked "Can I play an elf?" I would tell them that elves are called Drindrish in this world and no one has seen one in a long time. And if one was found they would be killed pretty much on the spot. The Drindrish enslaved humanity for a long time in the Valdorian Age.