bluesguy

Re: What product(s) should I get to cover 'modern' equipment & vehicles Some days I am just not awake. There is a table in Hero 6e v2 pg 208 for guns. DUH

Ok I am trying to figure out what product(s) to purchase that will cover modern (not sci fi or even superpowered) firearms, tactical armor, cars, trucks, buses, radios, etc... It would be good to have a way to 'easily' build up some groups in my Superhero campaign that are not superpowered but just powerful (mob comes to mind, narco-terrorists, etc). Thank you

Re: Looking for 'maps' for a modern environment Thank you all for the great suggestions.

Re: Help me build a Peacebringer character (City of Heroes) Thank you master builders/designers!

The person who wants this character is new to my gaming group and he is new to Hero. From what I gather from Peacebringer wiki the type appears to be a energy blaster of some kind. But the players has stated things like: Various kinds of blasts Some kind of hand-to-hand ability connected w/ blast Healing? The ability to 'borrow' other heroes abilities/skills (not absorb/steal away) If anyone has some suggestions I would love to hear them.

Re: Looking for 'maps' for a modern environment Poster razor looks like a great tool to add to my arsenal of tools. But all these products are PDF files and Poster razor doesn't handle PDF files. How do you deal with that?

Re: Looking for 'maps' for a modern environment I do have the Hero System Resource Kit which is ok. And the downloaded/PDF resources from DriveThruStuff are also very useful. But nothing beats a laminated color map with hexes or squares on it. Printing out paper ones is ok. But not nearly as nice.

GameMastery has some of the best maps for playing Fantasy RPGs that you can find. I do have a hex/square map that I can draw on with the 'dry eraser' markers so I can draw out maps by hand. But it would be nice to either have some 'standard' modern scene maps (street corner, bank, base, mad scientist lab, etc) to use with Champions. Does anyone know about a product like the one I am describing? Also does anyone know where I can get/buy 'landscape' to go with a map? I use to have their transparencies which I had bought that had cars, telephone poles, mailboxes, etc. which could be added to the map so the superheros could use those items in combat. Thank you all in advance.

Re: Considering running a Champions campaign - what do I need to buy.... Yesterday I bought Champions 6e (PDF) & HD pack and Champions 6e Universe & HD pack. This was exactly what the GM ordered . Thank y'all. Your advice was a huge help.

Re: Considering running a Champions campaign - what do I need to buy.... I want to thank everyone for the advice. I already have Hero Designer and a bunch of material that I bought when I started up my Fantasy Hero game. I bought a bunch of HD packs when I first got back into Hero Games.

Re: Building times I came here to find out ...

Re: Where do your chars put their XPs? I went through this with my campaign. Magic is weak and hard to learn. So skills and combat ability is 'king'. Here is how I have handled skills in my campaign world. Also I run a campaign 50/50 campaign of combat to role playing. This also has a big impact on what people spend points on. The way is has played out, is that the players are making sure to work on the combat skills and improve them but they are also investing a lot of points in non-combat skills. Knowledge Skills (general, area, city, etc), professional skills, and other skills. One of the characters decided - "my character should have deduction and some kind criminology skill" (whatever you want to call that in a fantasy environment). He basically came up with some plausible explanation, saved the points & spent them at the appropriate moments. So now he is a cross between a Hawk from Spencer for Hire and Sherlock Holmes . Makes for some interesting role playing and adventures in a town of cut throats. Another character has decided that his character is going to be THE weapon smith in town. So he is buying up all kinds of knowledge skills around weapon smithing. He already had some basic skills and abilities. His character's background fit the premise so I have been allowing him to buy up skills along the way. Another character keeps buying up all her presence based skills because she is going to 'talk people' into what she wants. She has bought all the ones she has to human max. She also is constantly adding to her KS about people, places, things & legends.

Re: Considering running a Champions campaign - what do I need to buy.... Everyone thank you for the feedback. I should have stated I already have HD. Excellent tool. Looks like I will get Champions 6th Ed Which should be enough to get started.

Ok I have the basic Hero books and a bunch of stuff to run my Fantasy Game, which is going very well. But during the summer there will be points in time when everyone can't get together and the rest of us would like to play. Champions campaigns were always good 'fill' for those breaks because they can be very episodic, at least the way I run my Champions games. In any case, I am looking at the Hero store and trying to figure out what is must have, nice to have, and when I have more $s than I know what to do with . I am also going w/ PDFs whenever possible. I don't have the physical space for a lot of books Must Haves? Champions Universe 6th Ed Champions Powers - not sure I need this but maybe it will make it easier to build characters... Opinions Champions Battlegrounds - good place for a starting set of adventures? Book with a bunch of super villains [*]Nice to Haves? Champions Universe Organizations Bundle - Expensive but looks very useful More books w/ super villains Suggestions & recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Re: Animal companions - reducing the cost

Re: Miracles vs Magic: The Faith Reserve I like this approach. Unfortunately the End reserve costs are 'crazy' high for a Hero level campaign.

Re: Animal companions - reducing the cost This sounds a lot like the character my daughter ended up building for the game I have been running. She wanted her character to be something like a cross between a Mongol/Native American (archery & horseback riding) and a druid. She also wanted to have an animal companion. There just were not enough points to build that character to start with. So she started out with a couple of basic spells, good CSL w/ a bow and an excellent riding skill. Over time she has bought an 'archery style martial art', learned to shot from her horse (no penalties and some fancy 'movie' style riding & shooting skills) and got an owl for a animal companion. For the owl she started out with a juvenile owl. I basically lowered a number of stats and abilities from the standard owl write up. She has been adding points to the owl along the way. First the owl matured, then the owl got smarter, then she got a mind link with the owl, and she is saving up so she can see/hear what the owl hears. If she had tried to start out with the end result, she would still be saving points and be pretty dang frustrated.

Re: Enchanted Items I found that it is easy to convert. Easier if you have HD & buy the Hero Pack;)

Re: Damage Limits This is an interesting thread, especially how it morphed into a discussion about magic weapons and armor. I am currently running a campaign based on the Valdorian Age and if there are any magic weapons or armor they will 'purpose built' to fit the story. Once used they will not longer have any value towards the campaign. For instance if the story is going to have the players deal with a legendary monster they will 'hear' about the 'only way to kill' said monster is with a particular weapon or magic or whatever. But after they defeat the monster the weapon or magic item is basically useless because it only had one purpose. This fits the legendary model of 'magic' that I want to run in my campaign. As for damage class and CSL, the players have already gotten pretty much as good as they are going to get. They run into a lot of 'minions' (OCV 4-5; DCV 5 and maybe +1 or +2 in CSL & shield), wearing 3 or 4 PD/ED armor using 1d6+1 or 1 1/2d6 weapons. The players on the other hand range in OCV from 5 to 6; DCV 5 to 6 + some have shields; +4 to 6 CSL; up to +3 PSL; wear 6 PD/ED armor ("magic" leather armor made from carrion crawler skin that they killed); using 1 1/2d6 to 3d6 weapons (when strength is included). Pretty much the characters move through minions like Conan would. And that is exactly what I wanted in the campaign. I am enforcing the 2x DC rule for now. I have also capped OCV/DCV to either 5/5 or 7/7 depending on the style of fighter and limited the strength of the characters depending on the style of fighter (tanks have +18; fencer/speedsters are ~13/15). What I have encouraged is learning a martial art that goes with your character's fighting style. This has played out well. When they run into opposition that is 'weaker' in one-on-one combat situations they slice through individuals like a hot knife through butter. When they run into a large number of 'weaker' opponents they get creative or use maneuvers that might be dangerous against someone as skilled as they are but are very cinematic - big time sweeps; picking up an opponent and throwing them at a bunch that is getting ready to charge; archers who take head shots to drop opponents with one shot; speedsters who disarms a few and then gives them a 'prick' to suggest they run away. So the five characters have had encounters with 20 or 30 minion bandits at a time and it was pretty much the way you would expect an encounter like that between Conan or Fafred/Gray Mouser to go - bandits were mincemeat. When they have run into opponents who are their equals they start to get nervous and play more defensively. They look for ways to minimize their opponents strengths. The last time that happened they were happy that everyone decided to run away from each other. The players seriously wounded the bad guys and the bad guys seriously wounded a few PCs. The PC (and players) went home licked their wounds (and pride) and started thinking about 'how are we going to deal with those guys?'

Re: Damage Limits I like creating magic items that are unusual and not particularly combat useful. I am also perfectly happy to let magic items get taken, lost or stolen. So recently the players found a blanket that always stays warm or cool depending the outside temperature. There was a fair bit of arguing about who in the party would get it. That was fun.

Re: Background Rewards I do something similar. I have spelled out how I award experience points on our groups Obsidian Portal site. Experience points for adventuring is pretty straight forward. The other ways involve helping to flesh out the campaign world. For instance writing up adventure logs that are written from the character's POV; helping to create shops or NPCs; developing legends, lore and songs; etc. A couple of ideas the players have come up with have generated adventure ideas.

Re: What third party Hero products would you like to see? Fantasy Hero adventures that can be dropped into any setting. For instance a city adventure involving kidnappings for some nasty purpose. And maybe write up the villains a couple of different ways so they could fit in a classic "high fantasy world" (lots of magic and races) and a sword & sorcery world (limited magic and 95% of the races are human or human like). Exact same villains for personalities and motivations just different kinds of powers/abilities/etc. Get permission to create adventures for a specific setting that is already published by Hero. How about an epic campaign in an existing setting. Basically come up with a big story, break it into 'books' and 'chapters'. Provide the villains (see above on capabilities) and major plot devices for each chapter (location, general goal, hooks into the story, how this story 'links' to the next story). But leave space for the individual GM to fill in the gaps.

Re: Free Stuff! Valdorian Age Maps on PDF So I originally scanned these maps and sent them to Steve L. I have been taking the maps and using AutoRealm to create nicer color ones for my Obsidian Portal site. Here is a version of The Frontier as a jpg and Three Fingers area as a bmp. Hopefully the folks at Hero don't mind that I posted this. Sorry if I broke protocol.

Re: Blueprints/Maps for sailing or oared ships I did some downloading of files and research on the information that everyone posted. The Humber Keel is exactly the river barge I was looking for. The main rivers in the immediate campaign area are very wide. But the source book said barges were rowed up and down the river. That seemed crazy to me but I don't know anything about boats/ships at all. Thank you so much Andy! I also went to DriveThruStuff and got a number of PDFs that will meet my needs.

Re: Blueprints/Maps for sailing or oared ships Thank you. I will get back to everyone when I get somethings worked up.