Markdoc

>>> Is a 20 STR really as effective for a thief as a +5 Stealth or a +3 with Stealth skills?<<< Yep. Stealth is good an' all, but all players know that eventually they will get seen. And attacked. STR is not all about shouting "by Crom" and whacking the guard with your mighty broadsword. The extra PD, REC and STUN will keep your thief alive when the inevitable happens. Two extra DC, the ability to lift heavy things, bend bars, carry your loot away and so on make it just that much more attractive. And should a thief have to whack a guard with his mighty broadsword, the Fafhrd style thief who sneaks up and whacks his opponent with a heavy sword for 11 BOD and 33 stun is going to have far better life expectancy than the mouser type who sticks his opponent with a rapier for 4 BOD and 12 Stun..... Players notice little things - like how the muscular guys get major advantages, but in fact surrender vey little in return. As I say, YMMV. If it was one group of Hero players, or one particular game, then maybe it's not an issue. But it's been EVERY game. There's almost always one player who chooses character conception over points and it used to annoy me that that player almost always suffered as result. In non-FH game, STR is probably not such a big issue. But in FH, where all non-magical damage is defined by your STR, it makes a huge difference. Even for magic-users. At one point I was playing a big, bald, boastful fire mage (18 STR, big honking sword) and the party's other magic user was your archetypal weedy little guy, with a staff. Our magical powers were not significantly different. But whenever something fanged and spiky got close to the magic users, Caranx whipped out the two handed sword and waded in, while the weedy mage cowered and snivelled. OK, good roleplaying, but Jeff (the weedy mage's player) folded the character after a few sessions and went with a buff cleric type instead.... If STR had been 2 points per instead, I would still have bought 18 STR for Caranx. It fitted his loud abrasive personality and how I envisaged him. However, giving the weedy mage 16 points more to spend on other things might have let him shine in the magical arena as much as my character did in the blowing-and-chopping-things-up-department. cheers, Mark

So if I understand this, you get a new character, but the new one gets to keep all your stuff - and he has no stuff of his own. I don't see anything about the old character coming back, or you getting healed, or your rings charged up, or anything of this sort. Obviously, the new character could use any powers/items etc that he could power himself, but anything that was used up of its own accord would still be used up. If that's right, here's how I would do it: Summon: Mage, limited group, slavishly loyal, usable by other, extradimensional, side effect: Extradimensional teleport, vs caster: to wherever it is the summoned creatures come from, cannot take equipment. The way it would work is: you cast the spell and Poof! you vanish (the side effect). In your place is a randomly chosen Mage, who now has all your stuff. He can use the spell, in which case he also goes bye-bye and ANOTHER new creature appears, and so on. Eventually, I guess it would cycle round to you again, but that might be a long time. This is all hero-legal. The only reason that GM's permission is required is that strictly speaking these are NPCs, so they could just choose to take off and that's that. Since they are slavishly loyal, however, they will probably do their best to fulfil your goals, which should make this a bit more palatable to most GMs if you want to play them as "your own character" Cheers, Mark

I also agree with Archer. There's two reasons. The Theoretical: STR is such a great bargain, when you cost out the points that truly appears unbalanced. Unlike some other Stat.s which people debate the price of such as CON, almost all of the benefits of STR are so game useful, that they have price attached, so you can see what you get: There really is no other way to interpret the math. OTOH, people may differ on the value of "Does not get stunned so often" although it is clearly advantageous. The fact that STR is particularly out of whack is evidenced by the other kludges in the system which have to made to accomodate it at the current cost, such as "HA costs 3 points per dice, but it's really 5" or "You are not allowed to by STR, ranged" But if it was just theory, then I'd consider the cost a blotch on the system: it would offend me but I probably would not change it. Then there's the empirical. In my own experience, STR is overbought almost everywhere. In Heroic games, the abuse is most obvious, but just look at published characters for any system: gadgeteers with 18 STR, Speedsters with 25, Batman clones with 30... That's why although you can make a weaker case that INT is also underpriced, I don't plan to change the cost of INT in my games: I have never suffered from a flood of INT-monsters. And while CON scores tend towards the upper end, I have never had a problem with every player wanting 18 CON in my games. In line with emperical testing, I changed the cost of STR in my games (also HA, which went to 5 points per d6, which is how it should be) and Voila! Just like that, all my problems went away You could say I am sold on the idea cheers, Mark

Lorica segmentata (or the Loricus Segmentum, if you want to be picky) is what is generally referred to as articulated plate. After all "plate" armour normally had the abdomen composed of several segments too - otherwise your torso was entirely immobilised. Likewise, although people think of the classic heavy infantryman's armour from the Hadrianic period as "lorica segmentata" (because Hadrian left us a lot of carvings showing it) writers used the plural "Lorica segmentata" for a reason - this name covered different types of armour, some of which were in fact solid breastplates of the type which survived the Camillian reforms, others of which appear to be what we would call Lamellar or Scale today. It just means "armour made from individual pieces" and was probbaly found in a thousand different variants. While the Romans were very precise in their language for things they really cared about (How many other languages have a word for "killed every tenth person"?) they appear to have given liitle though to the needs of 20th-21st century gamers for concise terminology There's no reference or meaning of welding, anywhere - the classic lorica segmentata appears to have been held together with leather straps and little metal hooks and eyes: much like 15th century plate armour. cheers, Mark

>>> I can't believe this! You seem to be right <<< But of course! Seriously though, I think the whole thing started with overenthusiastic Victorian amateur historians who tried to define different styles of armour based on contemporary illustrations. They gave us "banded mail", "mascled mail" (I've always wanted to ask a GM if I could buy mascled mail), threaded mail and... studded mail or studded armour. This despite the fact that historically there only seem to have been 4 kinds of armour - mail, splint/lamellar, articulated plate and leather/cloth - and that medieval artists were not famous for their adherence to accurate depiction ("Is that a horse he's riding? It looks more like a daschund." "No, I think it's a big weasel with pointy ears - or maybe a gaint marmot" "Don't be an idiot - they didn't have marmots in medieval Germany") When Gygax came along, he wanted multiple armour types, so studded leather and banded mail entered the general vocabulary along with useful words like Glaive-Guisarme. cheers, Mark

>>>>Also another thing to consider regarding Full plate mail is that it had to be made to measure and thus took a long time to make, months to a year usually<<<< Rubbish. Medieval Europe was full of armouries churning out mix and match plate armour (munition plate) and the output of the larger ones was literally thousands of suits a year. Fitted armour is better, no doubt, but also takes a few weeks, not months and certainly not a year. Many nobles had suits of plate made for their male children from the age of 5 onwards - it'd be pretty damn pointless if you had to wait a year after the fitting: it wouldn't fit anymore. In this vein, Wade Breen made an articulated suit of plate for his kid as halloween costume, using only traditional tools, in a few weeks - and he's a hobbyist, not a full time professional with assistants. Professional armourers, using much the same tools as their medieval forbears exist today - they would go out of business if they sold one suit of armour a year... I could go on, but you get the point. File this one under "armour myths" along with "only nobles wore plate armour" and "fallen knights could not get up because of the weight of their armour". cheers, Mark

One of my favourite old characters, called Nexus, had horrendous levels of duplication, with the special effect that he was calling "future versions" of himself back through time. The cost was reduced by a side effect - teleport through time to a specific location, plus side effect, in that he took the damage of all the duplicates at the end of the time hop. Effect: on phase 2 - a flood of Nexuses. Phase 4, they all disappear. 11 phases later Nexus reappears where duplicate #12 was. In terms of combat effectiveness, it was pretty dubious, but in terms of comic effect it was priceless. cheers, Mark

Given that mundane foci can easily be replaced "out of game" ie: between sessions, paying extra for a replacement seems a bit pointless. In general, carrying two guns or two swords is just special effect: Chow Yun Fat is just as effective with one gun as two - or even four. IIRC, the first time I saw the "+X points for an extra" rule was in the revised version of Seeker published in an old AC. It struck me then as a rule without a point, and it still does. Yes, letting players have two guns that have to be disarmed gives them a minor edge over the guy with one, just as being able to shoot energy beams from your two hands rather than just your eyes does. But in general, the difference is so small that it's pointless to quibble over. If he want to carry 6, then he needs to buy OIF instead of OAF. At that point who cares if he carries 6 or 26? cheers, Mark

>>>I was a little suprised at just how hated the Sherman was. Goes to show, don't believe the hype.<<<< That's because you haven't served in one:) Neither have I, truth be told, but I have been in one. If you get the chance, sit in the radio-op/co-gunner seat and look at the breech block in the "fired" position. Ya gotta keep your head hard back against that little leather headrest to avoid touching it with your nose. Now imagine a really hot breech block, weighing about 1200 pounds, coming back at you at your face at about 200 MPH, while you are bouncing around over uneven ground..... That's the most obvious example, but tankers in general were not complementary about the design/comfort of the Sherman. The fact that glancing side hits on the early version heated the armour up enough to ignite the badly placed fuel tanks was just a bonus (hence the "Ronson" nickname: lights first time, every time!) OTOH, it was reliable, cheap to produce and "good enough" - virtues which made it beloved of manufacturers and quartermasters. cheers, Mark

Umm, outside fantasy movies and BDSM, was there ever anything like "studded" leather? I have never seen a contemporary reference to such a beast, nor a real piece of such armour - athough it must be admitted leather armour is not that easy to find. A brigandine is certainly nothing to do with studded leather - it's essentially a coat of metal plates held in place with either soft leather, cloth, or (in some middle eastern/asian cultures) light mail. I agree with Stevel - adding studs to leather is just a fashion statement. It shouldn't do anything to the DEF. cheers, Mark

Me, I'm strongly in the 2 point camp. Of course what's "broken" is a matter of definition. Personally, I got sick and goddamn tired of every character having 18-20 STR in Heroic (especially FH) games. So, I just houseruled it. I've been using 2 points per for years and have no intention of ever going back If the Muscle beach syndrome bothers you, then do the same. As for 6th ed., don't hold your breath. SteveL was heavily involved in the great STR debate while writing up FREd and while he concedes that the maths aspect of STR doesn't make sense, he felt that the trouble caused by changing virtually every character ever published is more grief than it is worth. There's nothing in this round of the debate that hasn't been said before, so I doubt that will change. cheers, Mark

My two bits on this: 1. Make Str cost 2 points per. That will reduce somewhat the number of tankmonsters (it won't eliminate them tho' - I speak from experience) 2. Consider a change to the encumbrance rules. There is a recent thread here on precisely this topic. The penalties levied should not be so severe as to make heavy armour unattarctive - not only will the players hate it, but it would be kind of stupid: in real life (as much as that matters) a heavily armoured knight was often considered worth 3-5 lightly-armoured foes even if they were experienced fighters. cheers, Mark

Oh, the error was deliberate: this was given as example of a made up calendar and as we all know, many GM's can't do math. cheers, Mark

My advice would be: DON'T increase the damage of weapons - and I have been GMing Fantasy Hero games for nearly 20 years.... I've played in an FH game where the GM did this (remember, adding +1 DC to the weapon allows the player to add in another DC for STR/martial arts/levels...) After a few adventures we quietly shifted weapon DC back (it was like "My, where did all these dead characters come from?") I'd suggest you enjoy the fact that heavy armour characters are largely immune to small attacks - they can munch through low point opponents armed with small weapons, but they are still vulnerable to good hits or heavier weapons. Doing your calculations off average damage gives an inaccurate impression. Sure many attacks will do little or no harm - but it only takes one or two good hits to kill or maim, and you can easily rack that up in an evening's play. Players don't remember the 15 hits that did no damage - they remember the arrow in the face that did 8 BOD. Remember, too, the difference in BOD between the mighty barbarian and the wimpy mage is often only 5-7 BOD - in other words one or two good hits. If you are coming from DnD, it's easy to overlook that. If Trom Kothron wades into bunch of goblins in his heavy dwarven DEF8 armour then yes, the attacks that do 4 BOD are not going to inconvenience him much. But it only takes a few rolls of 9, before he is leaking blood - especially if they hit him somewhere sensitive. In my no-magic game, I had 150 point PCs capable of cranking out 3d6 damage with high STR, levels and halberds or two handed swords (the sort of weapons favoured by heavily armoured knights, funnily enough...) At that point, you are putting 3 BOD through on an AVERAGE hit, and a good roll (13, or 14 points of damage, not maximum, so we are talking about one hit in 6, or so) is going to put anyone into a world of hurt, even if you miss the soft squishy bits. It was not normal by any means, but for the "mighty fighter" types in the party, one-shot kills on heavily armoured foes were not unknown. The rest of the party could crank out max damage between 2d6 and 2 1/2: still enough to put down a heavily armoured foe in one or two good shots. And if you go to lightly armoured characters - ugh! You can trust me on this: you do not want players running around with 3d6 killing attacks. That's the in-game rationale. But it meshes pretty well with real life - most people have a grossly exaggerated idea (from movies and TV, I guess) about how easy it is to kill someone with a blade (the same is true of guns for that matter). However in reality, in the west where the victim can get treatment, only about 3% of stabbings are fatal (that's inclusive of multiple stabbings, which account for about 20-30% of cases, but the vast majority of fatalities). Most victims are not wearing any kind of rDEF but of course their attackers are usually only using 1/2 d6 to 1 d6 HKAs - say 1 to 1 1/2 d6 damage. Remember, most deaths are due to bleeding in the 300 to 400 TURNS after the stabbing so this damage level seems reasonable. Looked at in that light, adding +3 DC to weapons is not only bad from a game balance point of view, but unrealistic as well. Cheers (Dr.) Mark

If the original poster has not been letting players add their PD to their rDEF for STUN, I think we have isolated the source of the problem Having said that, you still often get the "knockout effect" on heavily armoured characters. Personally I have no problem with that - as far as I can tell, that's historically accurate: "slit the throat of the armoured guy on the ground" was a standard tactic for centuries before Agincourt! If you want a high risk game, the solutions are: 1. winkle your heavily armoured guys out of their metal shells (ya gotta peel 'em before you eat 'em, as the dragons say) 2. Add some NPCs into the mix with either find weakness, AP weapons like picks or heavy Crossbows, just plain ol' big-damage attacks. 3. Introduce a critical hit system (the one I used in the past is simple - on a critical hit, you get to choose your hit location OR you can choose max damage). In general, though, I favour #1, which is an "in-game" solution dependant on the GM running games where heavy armour is not an option. Frankly, I find FH quite lethal enough in my hands as it is... cheers, Mark

Here's a couple of suggestions: here's a link to my semi-random FH character generator, with examples of how I use it to overcome GM's block http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/lifepath/character_generator1.htm It does not automatically generate characters for you, but walks you through generating a hopefully coherent series of powers and suggests a very rough backstory. Secondly, two links with a mess o' FH characters - many of which are templates for generic NPCs. Often I swipe one of these as the starting point for a specific NPC and just add in some extra powers/ideas. http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Sengoku/npc.html http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/gothick_empires/ge_npcs.htm cheers, Mark

Not entirely on topic, perhaps, but what IS considered a "hot-selling" Hero item? I read about items which have been reprinted, but is a print run 1000 copies, 10,000 copies or 100,000 copies? I have to admit I have puzzled over this for years... cheers, Mark

And here's Phayze, annoying kid teleporter. His shtick is doing things like opening a hole behind one of the bad guys and whapping them on the head with a baseball bat, or teleporting them into garbage dumpsters. Not a terribly combat effective character, but lots of fun to play :-) cheers, Mark

Good lord. Just discovered this thread (don't hang out with the Superheroes much...) here's Bo Zhao - cybernetic supercop from Hong Kong and her ... ah...backup, in the tank. cheers, Mark

Personally, I love "anti-stereotype" characters. Some I've done include: Blue collar martial artists: Max Maximum - the Jamaican man-mountain. A martial artist whose style was wrestling, spiced up WWF style. Geordie du Beque - martial artist from the Glasgow slums - he gets by on general toughness and uncanny good luck rather than a mastery of Ki :-) Valiant! - a brick type with a nerdy base personality: his quirk is that he can transform into a brick (all powers are OIHID) - but that his Hero form considers his "normal form" a hopeless loser and his normal form considers the Hero form a dangerous psychopath who's going to get them both killed... (I admit I lifted the idea at least in part from the Miracle Man series). I have also done the "machine mystic" shtick, with a seven-armed, spellcasting robot - but again can't claim too much originality: I just fused Spiral (from the X-men) with Deadlock (from ABC warriors) cheers, Mark

The most important thing is not "how can you do it" but "are your players into it". If they are, it could be pretty fun. If not, the results will be horrible - both in terms of gameplaying and in terms of personal angst. I've played in a (short lived) game where the GM liked people to act out what their characters were doing. With the exception of myself (who as a GM and collector of medieval music had a big store of rhymes, songs, riddles etc to draw on), the players HATED it. Either way - don't expect high art :-) As for the SCA, learning to compose musice in the medieval style is a lot of work and extempore composition is an almost lost art. Most people in the SCA have full time jobs, putting the sort of effort needed to acquire those skills out of reach for all but a talented few. Most I've heard would get driven off with clods of earth and horse dung from even provincial fairs :-) A wonderful thing I heard a few years ago however was competition between musicians from medieval heritage in the UK. Most of them were historians or muscians, a fair number were both, and so they do this sort of thing for a living. They would do things like compose an impromptu song on a topic suggested by the audience in just a few minutes and do a virtuoso job of it: or start a song and then pass it off to another muscian who would pick it up at exactly the point left off- going around and around the circle, or (most impressive of all) a pair of couples (one singer, one fiddler) who made beautiful totally impromptu songs. The fiddler would start a tune - and often change to another one partway through - the singer had to compose lyrics on the spot and sing them in time and harmony, so she was composing and singing at the same time.... egad! cheers, Mark

I think it helps to not think of "a bullet" as a charge - a .30 cal machine gun fires around 500 rounds a minute - that's around AF 50 for your average Schmoe. Do you really want to buy AF50? Then consider that a .30 cal is considered to have a relatively low RoF for a HMG... Considering that your tank carries enough ammo for 10 minutes sustained fire and that you are unlikely to to blast that lot off in a single firefight, I'd say 0 END is fine - alternatively, buy AF5 or 10 and a few hundred charges (define each charge as "a burst" if it helps ). In either case, that should keep you from running out of ammo in most cases. cheers, Mark

For skill rolls, I use the complementary approach, with the person actually doing the work using only the highest complementary rolls. So having 20 people with 11- skill rolls is likely to be less help than one person with a 14- roll, which matches my personal experience: give me one assistant who knows their stuff over 20 assistants who have a vague idea. With regard to STR, just add up their lifting capacity to get the total STR. For example, 2 STR10 people can lift 200 Kg: the same as a STR15 person - NOT a STR 20 person: therefore treat them as a 15 STR person IF they can coordinate. As a general rule, lifting something is so simple a task then I would not require a roll, just as I don't require a climbing roll to go up a ladder under normal circumstances. More complicated tasks, I would require a roll.

Actually it should be: "Distinctive Features: Fine Pair of Shoulders, Not Concealable, Causes Sergeant-Major Reaction."

Or buy megascale on your Extra knockback. They'll only take 1d6 of damage per megahex they fly backwards, but if you want to punch somebody into the next state, that seems like the way to go. Of course, if a player tried to slide this past me, I'd have a 2-letter answer for him, but.... cheers, Mark