Markdoc

Several points here to consider. First the END thing: be aware - if you are not already - that although requiring END use makes spells temporarily exhausting, that this only lasts a minute or so. So as described, Mages can cast spells all day and potentially hundreds of spells a day. That might be exactly what you want, but if not, you might consider the longterm END rules, so that after an intense bout of spell-casting the mage is actually worn out and needs to rest for more than a minute or two. Second, you can choose to have powers draw from an END battery or yourself: you only pay for an advantage if you want either. if the cost is fixed at 50% from the battery and 50% from yourself then I'd just call that a +0 advantage since it shares some of the advantages and some of the disadvatages of either method. As for the spellbook thing. if mages write them down merely as an aid to memorisation, then I would suggest some kind of skill roll. You can assign penalties for how long it was since the mage last used a spell - and this can be reduced or negated if the mage has a copy to hand to study. Thus the Change environment spell the mage uses every morning to warm up his bedroom when he wakes up, will be at a +3, while the one time in his life he needs to use Didius' Dire Gambit, he had better have the book to hand so he can read it... If you also use the skill penalty for active points, then you can use the concept that small, simple spells are easier to remember than the 15 page instructions for casting the Calling Forth of the Hated Dead cheers, Mark

To back up his Fitzness, I should point out that you can buy a National Geographic archive on CDROM, with an utterly ridiculous number of images. Makes 'em easier to find and you don't have to build a three room garage to hold all your national geographics :-) Also, despite being drawing-challenged (can make a stick man 3 times out of 4, if given sufficient time) I can do decent character pictures using the computer Here's a friend's character, Hadmog the Tall I did the other evening (let's see if this attachment thing works...) Cheers, Mark

>>>Boy, this is getting complicated. I'm starting to agree with Lucius; the NCM concept is getting to be too much math, and too much inconsistency, to be worth it. Odd, since cleaning up inconsistency and math seems to be Steve's rationale in making the NCM rule uniform.<<< Only if you a) start with the rationale that NCM is always 20 and want characters with NCM to be able to go above 20 in some cases but not others... That's where the inconsistency (and complication) comes from, as well as all this piffle about buying normal characteristics as powers. Forget all this nonsense about "paying extra to raise caps". That was an ugly pimple on the buttocks of 4th Ed., which thankfully is no longer with us. NCM works fine as long as you treat it exactly the way it was intended to be used: as a genre-defining disadvantage. In a superheroic game, nobody (normally anyway) is forced to take NCM. It is a disadvantage in that it limits the character's participation in the normal statistics arms race that occurs as a game develops. I've read all the "it's not really a disadvantage, 'cos you don't have to buy those stat.s" posts and feel that if you take that approach, it falls into the same category as "Susceptibility to sunlight". After all, you don't HAVE to go outside during daylight... Just so: NCM doesn't penalise you if you don't go outside the range - and does if you do. Susceptibility to sunlight doesn't penalise you if you don't go out in the sun, and does if you do... In a heroic game where the GM decides that NCM is in force, the "20 cap" is essentially "NCM, human". If the GM decides that "NCM, ogre" has different caps, then it can be changed - and possibly the points changed also, just as Age has different levels. if NCM offends you, then don't use it. If it offends you and you want to use it anyway, then call it "Physical limitation: human" (which is what it really is) and treat it exactly the same way. Then you can have Physical limitation: Elf, or Physical limitation: Ogre, or.... cheers, Mark

>>> Sorry, but NCM Should be adjustable so it can aplly to all the races appropriately at Gm's discretion. after all that is what the rest of the book is all about.<<< NCM *is* adjustable. OK, so I know The Steve says it isn't, but in this case he's just wrong. Time to move on :-) And anyone who tries to buy "Orcish muscles" as a power in my game will be introduced to the Sharp Pencil of Pain... cheers, Mark

Phil has expressed my feelings pretty well, but one thing that I had sort of "assumed" - and it seems that Phil shares - is that NCM is actually "Human NCM". We can all agree that the old system of paying to raise the maxima was just whacked, and I never used it. Likewise the idea that NCM applies to with the same levels to pixies and ogres, nut not to horses, elephants and palindromedaries is, well, just silly. However, I find the *concept* of NCM thoroughly useful - just as I find the Disadvantage of "Age" useful. And I apply it the same way. "Age 40+" is different from "Age 60+". Players can choose to have either or neither. Likewise, "NCM, human" is different from "NCM, centaur" - both are 0 point disadvantages in my game, but they could well be worth points in another game. To take a simple example in an FH game. One player wants to play a Dark Elf assassin with two swords :-=. In addition to his regular skills, he wants to have a very high DEX, the ability to see in the dark, etc. The GM then has three choices. He can say No. Or he can say "OK, good character concept, you are allowed a DEX of 27. But I don't want everyone in the game to have really high DEX, so no, Blog the Unworthy has to stick to the campaign limit of DEX 20." In a few months the GM has an adventuring party consisting entirely of Dark Elves, Minotaurs and Ghosts.... Otherwise, he can say, OK, we'll scrap the campaign DEX limits - and then deal with fighters with DEX 27 and SPD6 (and hey, as far as I am concerned, that's perfectly valid FH, it's just not where I like to run most of my games...) My approach is to set out the allowed races and their NCMs - which generally total 0 as far as raised/ lowered Stat.s go - and say to my players: you all get NCM, but you can chose NCM: ogre, NCM: human, NCM: slimy thing that lives under the floors of houses, but if you want to go outside the normal range of Stat.s, there is a penalty to be paid. NCM gives me a control mechanism that is unbiased (at least as far as players go - it may favour certain races over others). It allows me to weasel out of having to decide what constitutes a "good reason". I have long since learned that even with good players, the definition of what constitutes a good reason often varies wildly from what I would like. Telling a player his character concept sucks is not something I enjoy. so in conclusion, i thingk it is fair tp say the problem is not NCM. but the notion that NCM is a flat limit that applies to all species. I think this is where Phil is coming from with his comment that NCM only makes sense applied to humans. cheers, Mark

Me, a hero god? Gosh. I have in general not been blessed with player-saints, but more usually number-crunching rules-mongers (good players, though, which is what counts) Seriously, though I HAVE had the powers you describe - if not a player with +8 OCV in Greatsword, at least one with +6 OCV and martial arts. Likewise the "closing tunnel" attack spell (although I prefer the traditional "Forlorn Encystment" name :-) But that's the point - with all of assembled herodom - and the world of fantasy literature, films and comics - at my command as GM, do you really think I'm going to be challenged by some punk with a sword and 15 OCV? So yes - hero system characters can vary wildly. And obviously some GM intervention (and preferably more than just "some") is a desirable thing. But I stand by my claim - OVERALL, FH has proved to be a very balanced system (at least for me). I would make no claims about it being the *most* balanced system - there's far too may games I have never even read. Nor would I claim it is the easiest - for a quickie pickup game, D&D or TFT is far easier (and i use those, when I feel inclined). But "easy" and balanced are two entirely different things. A good example of balance - and perhaps a formative experience for me - is what we used to do for occasional one-off fun. Give your erstwhile players a certain amount of points (100, 200, whatever). Let them make up a character - anything they like, just no GM-permission-only powers or combos. Drop them into an environment of the GM's choosing and let them fight it out. At various times, we had the tunneling slug with mental powers, the mega-cannon-toting pixie, the flamethrower-armed robot, and the little old granny with a robotic arsenal in a pram, the psychotic mercenary with dimensional teleport bombs and the California beach babe in fall-apart armor with a jackhammer... One thing came through: it was impossible to make a character that had all advantages and no weaknesses. Plenty of well honed hero players devised a fiendish character construct that got the toffee whaled out of it. After running a few games with that lot, a samurai wannabe with a two-handed sword is no trouble, believe me.... cheers, Mark

The question as to whether "nature of attacks is inobvious" is a worthwhile advantage - and if so how much - is a fair one. But on thinking about it, it does not seem to be worth much - in about 20 years of Hero system gaming, it has simply never been an issue. That clearly makes it worth less in practical terms than "not in magnetic fields", which has come into play at least three times that I can recall. Of course, the fact that the latter is in the rulesbook may have had something to do with it :-) While a player could plausibly come up with such a power (a bow that shoots arrows with different special attacks, for example - such devices have been used in games I have run or played in) it has never given the player a significant edge. That may be because - in my games at least - the general approach if you are worried about the nature of an attack is a dive for cover BEHIND something. That protects against explosions, but not against gas. And I am not going to go round changing the cost of every attack based on special effect: EB, explosive 5 points/d6, energy blast explosive, gas, 7 points/d6, Energy blast explosive, heavier than air gas, 8 points/d6, etc, etc In short, special effects can be advantageous sometimes and that should be balanced in use by the occasional disadvantage. To me, this one does not affect play enough to worth a +1/4, although depending on your players, YMMV. One day BluBall the Alien Juggler is going to accidentally load a Mega-explosion ball into the holster normally used for the Laserbeam ball and use it on a nearby target. After all, if they look the same to everyone else, he's gonna need to buy a special sense himself to be able to tell them apart - and a player who wants to min-max the system like this is hardly gonna cough up 5 whole points for "can see multiple shades of dark blue" Cheers, Mark

I agree with the above posts: saying "No 25 STR thieves" immediately rules out someone who wants to play a Fafhrd- or Conan-inspired character. Arbitrarily setting limits is for sure the easiest route - in my opinion it is also the worst (both as a player and as a GM). That's not to say a game must have no limits. But the limits have to be there for a campaign-defining reason. Is "My father got this drink from the Ents, which made him really big and strong" a good reason for having a 13 STR hobbit? If not, what is? As for the STR 8 mage wanting to double his STR, I require all experience buys to be justified. If he want to improve his diet and spend time working out, then fine. If the brawny fighter wants to learn Pelorian epic poetry - then he'll have to find a Pelorian - or a court poet. I don't feel it is up to me to define how the player defines his character in response to my GM'ing style. If you want puny mages, stop throwing situations at them where STR plays a really big role. If you WANT your fighter to acquire something other than CSLs than give them situations where those other skills are essential... Interesting - thinking about it, in real life as well as games, I am in favour of *encouraging* the behaviour you want, rather than mandating it. The latter approach in both cases tends to encourage a "get around the rules" mentality Cheers,Mark

Traditionally the sorts of things that do possession live "somewhere else" - beyond the veil, in Hell, the Land of the Dead, whatever. For these creatures, I handle possession as a big-ass Telepathy, with the telepathic advantage and transdimensional, plus an associated mindlink (also across dimensions). The way it works is. the possessor possesses the target - once mind-controlled, the command is generally "Obey me!". Then "Accept this mindlink". At that point the possessor can talk with the possessee, gain information about his memories by asking, or get him to do things. The posessed person still has all their normal skills, so there is no problem there. And there is no problem about the possessor's body: it is still where it was - Somewhere else. Yes, it is expensive, although you can drop the cost by giving it the limitation Concentration 0 DCV, meaning the possessor's body is lying around somewhere helpless (this is appropriate for Shaman types or evil mages whose bodies lie around guarded by their familiars while the possessed prince tries to kill the king and abduct the princess, or whatever). They don't even need the Transdimensional bit. But expensive is GOOD! It doesn't matter for NPCs who you can make cost anything you like. But a PC with this power is just plain nasty. I *know* because I had a PC with this power (Character sheet at: http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/character_archive/facelessone.html) It essentially lets you take over someone else's character, or a suitable NPC. In the Faceless one's case, she tended to seduce a suitably morally deficient and hunky male, persuade him to ACCEPT the mind control (thus not much chance of failing), so he can instantly learn L33T ninja skills. That's why her skills are bought as usable by one other. Bingo, disposable L33T ninja. If he gets killed, well, she can relax, have a drink and find another stooge. That's not a power I would be happy with a PC having in my FH game! Though I have used it to generate a reusable villian for FH "Lord Mortus? Didn't we kill him already?" "Sure we did. Why do you think he's so mad at us?" cheers, Mark

The to hit modifiers are FOR SIZE - not BODY PART. So, to hit a normal human (human sized, yes?) -0. To hit the head of a normal human (about 1/6th of a human size), -8 (yeah, I know, it should be -6). To hit the mouth (about 1/30th of human size, say) -12. But to hit the mouth of a Rancor (about half human size, IIRC) -2. A few extra modifiers to reflect a natural reuctance to stick your arm inside a big maw filled with spiky teeth, might well be in order as well as the dangling-upside-down-being-held-by-one-leg modifier, but otherwise..... As for the giant DCV thing, even being really nimble isn't going to help much if you are the size of a bus - and the OCV penalty for hitting the head of something the size of a bus, is not going to be that great (unless it's one of those really big dinosaurs, with the teeny-tiny heads, of course). Of course that's a problem for giants, who will now have all attacks aimed at head or groin. Hmmm.....

How about this... GM: The alien hurls his circular energy globe at you. Player: OK GM: It lands at your feet and explodes Player: I dive for cover to avoid the blast GM: Ummm, Dude, it's ALREADY exploded. Likewise: GM: The alien points some kind of device at you. Player: OK GM: A laser beam strikes you in the chest Player: I dodge! GM: Nice try. In my games, dive for cover or dodge is declared before the nature of the attack is revealed and before any to hit rolls are made (the hex, the chest, whatever). Getting it wrong occasionally or giving up a phase for an attack that would miss is part of the tradeoff for being able to act out of sequence. If the player (or an NPC for that matter) mistakes an AoE for a beam/projectile weapon or vice versa, well, their remaining teammates can probably benefit from the lesson. I don't let players wait until they see whether an attack will hit before declaring a block either. Aren't I nasty? :-) Dive for cover can be usefully used against beam/projectile weapons too - for example, diving behind a pile of crates, or a vehicle. Very genre. cheers, Mark

It looked like fighting 100 agent Smiths was simply like fighting 1 agent Smith just multiple times.... But scenes like that one were why I suggested that you could also add CHA into the VPP. Matrix'ers are clearly faster, stronger, better dressed than the average person - as indeed are agents.

Seems like you have already gotten the gist of what you want, Lucius. Immunity to Fear does a bunch of useful things - which you listed. Simply buy the required powers, and list them as the "immune to fear" package. Increased PRE (only vs Fear) Damage reduction vs mental attacks (only vs Fear) Reduced END on running and STR One or two penalty CSLs (to offset stress-related penalties) The Resistance Talent. Probably cheaper than buying the character as an automaton and avoids the problems regarding freewill, increased costs of Defences and so on. The rest is just special effects. cheers, Mark

In my games, NCM has performed valuable service, so I am keeping it, even though it is a bit of a blotch from the metarules point of view. Actually, I would be happier, thinking about it, if ALL limits worked like NCM - you can exceed the campaign caps, but you have to pay double cost. Simply put, I have no objection in my FH game to a fighter with a STR of 23 or a thief with a SPD of 6 (I have had neither, FWIW). But I do not want either to be common. Thus NCM serves as barrier, but not an absolute one. No figher is going to pay the extra points to get to STR 23, unless being really strong is an important part of character concept to the player. And NCM ensures he WILL be "really strong" because few other people will make the same choice. If a player wants to go over the limit bad enough to cough up the extra points, who am I as GM to say no? It's THEIR character after all. cheers, Mark

Just looking at the system, it is going to require intensive GM oversight to keep it anything like balanced. If you want a game with mostly, or all magic users, that's OK. As it stands, once players get a bit of experience, magic users should be easily able to outclass their fighterly companions, with access to the same free weapons and armour, but also access invisbility, blindness spells, flight, etc. We have played around with variants on the "Fighters don't pay for swords and armour, so mages shouldn't pay for spells" and it has always led to a game where all the characters are mages or (more usually) fighter-mages. A more balanced way to approach this kind of thing might be to say that fighters get weapons and armour for free, but no magic, while mages get magic for free, but no weapons and armour. Othewise it becomes: everybody gets weapons for free and mages get magic for free too. Cheers, Mark

There's no "unfairness" to non-humans, since everybody pays for what they get. However, some racial streotypes are hard to fit into a decent points total. What I have done is to try to balance things off. Thus racial package deals I design come out to 0 points. A begining Faerie character (an "Elf", say) is going to have more points than a human. He/she/it will have a much longer life-span (note - not life expectancy!), and innate magical powers not available to a human. That's balanced by a deadly susceptibility to iron... It seems to work. Nonhuman PCs popped up in my game, but no one race ever predominated - except humans. A good rule of thumb is that if everyone seems to want to play a particular race, then it needs rebalancing. In some cases, I would not allow a non-human PC, even if the points balance. I am a bit queasy at the thought of a starting PC vampire, even though my vampire package works out at 0 total points (so I can drop it on PCs as and when needed, without having to mess with points totals). cheers, Mark

>>>Yup. The Hero system is totally dependent on the GM to balance things out. Both towards the PCs and any opposition they may face. In a good number of other rpgs, play balance is somewhat 'hard wired' (at least in the non-troupe style ones). Powers, npcs, and items are standardized straight out of published materials and hopefully have been somewhat playtested. In Hero it's up to the gm to set the limits. The GM has to be very careful on what powers and abilities are allowed into the campaign and what can be done in context with the group as a whole. And then has to be very careful what sort of obstacles are in a given scenario. It's generally a lot more work and more of an artform.<<<< Man, I could not disagree more. While there is plenty of room to spread out in Hero system, my experience - based on many years play and GM'ing - is that FH is generally well balanced. Not perfect, mind, but generally well balanced. Balance in many other game systems is very arbitrary. This has been bought home to me in our ongoing Runequest game. One of my characters is a troll. He's actually a fairly average troll - and he'll wipe the floor with almost any of the other characters, despite the fact that they are all far more experienced. Simply because Trolls are mean. The disadvantges suffered in return for grandiose physical stat.s are minimal. 2e DnD suffered from this horribly, even if you were using the "official" rules (Hmm. Lemmesee. Play a Fighter or a Cavalier? Well, duh!). 3e has improved things a lot, but without an underlying metasystem, it is already starting o go the same way as "new" rules are introduced. VtM is the same: some characters, can without any particular effort, slaughter others with the same level of experience (Iron Wind springs to mind...). To a certain extent that is also true of most "roll your stat.s" systems. It would be nice to think that the hardwired systems were carefully playtested to ensure that everything balanced out, but even that just ain't the case. Given that in many cases, extra rules, items, character classes, powers, etc are introduced by multiple authors over multiple books, it is hard to see how it could be otherwise. You could argue that combat is not the be-all and end-all of character balance and I'd agree. But it IS the arena in which differences in character power are most starkly contrasted. Likewise, I think we can gree that some degree of GM input is essential to getting a smoothly running game - in any system. But my experience has been that things go gak gak in Hero mostly when the GM starts to warp the system - taking certain powers out, adding extra things in, setting arbitrary limits. You need to do that sometimes to get the feel you want, but THAT's where the art part comes in: balancing the system with the changes you make. As a base system, Hero seems to me to pretty balanced - and like I said, I have run Con games, and campaigns that lasted years, games with all veterans, all newbies or a mix of both. I have certainly seen parties get toasted by opponents of lesser power - but that is also true of many other game systems I have run. cheers, Mark

I don't do cultural/social package deals - instead I dish out different everyman skills to different cultures. To simplify my life, I also have social everyman skills: thus a noble wll have an assumed low level of competence in certain social skills, while a city-dweller will have different ones and a farmer a different set again. I keep them pretty simple, since they *are* everyman skills. Finally I assign each culture a list of social package deals. So: Halsings (relatively sophisticated "dark ages" type culture) get Hunter, farmer, warrior, tradesman, etc but not Noble (they have no noble class) and no barbarians. Their northern neighbours get barbarian, shaman and noble. That's it. I tdoesn't mean a Kharghaz barbarian can't learn to be scholar (if he goes somewhere where they have books) but his everyman skills will be a barbarian's until he has live din his new culture for many years - he can ride (if not well) and callous sophisticates will laugh when he tries to use a knife and fork. That way, I can "assume" a basic familiarity with the things the character should know a little about and not have to worry about huge package deals that no-one wants to buy (in 4e, big package deals were good, since you got points back. In 5e, big package deals are bad, since you end up buying skills you never wanted). If they want to be good at something, they pay points for it. It also means that I do not have to generate the hundreds of detailed package deals that would otherwise be needed. There is no "Priest" package deal for example: a Dymerian Guardian of the Necropolis has an entirely different skillset from a Dymerian Tender of the Flame, even though they are both priests, both worship the same religion and could even serve in the same city. Thus I tend to generate small package deals for specific groups, containing only the skills that EVERYONE in the group would know. Too-detailed package deals take away too much freedom for my taste. cheers, Mark

In principle the idea is fine. You might want to think about how you wnat spellcasting to work. If you make MANA analogous to END (which you have done) then it will work the same way. That means that Mages will almost always start a fight with a full battery of spells, and that MANA use outside combat will normally be irrelevant. If you want Magic to be a bit a bit more restricted, you might like to delay the return rate. I am currently working on a Runequest conversion to Hero (actually, it is finished - I'm just finishing up the conversion of all the spells). In that game, I have swapped out EGO for a new characteristic called POW (Power). It works in all ways like EGO, so the change is cosmetic, mostly :-). I have also added a new Figured characteristic called Magic points (duh!) which is 1x POW. All spells take the limitation (consumes Magic points). Magic points regenerate more slowly than END, letting people cast multiple spells per day, but not giving them free range That's just an example of changing the system - it seesm to work well, so I see no reason your suggestion would notalso work. My caveat is that I do not like changing the system so far that you could not easily move a character from your game to another game, and I doubt that what you propose would be a problem. cheers, Mark

Hmm. Actually, it strikes me as pretty simple to run a game in the Matrix setting. Give everyone 150 point characters. Let them buy a VPP (only usable in the Matrix, +0) into which you can put skills, talents and characteristics (with NCM and a -1/2 limit reflecting the need to download them). You might also want to include Superleap as an available power :-) - but I figure that's just a reflection of increased STR. Players who enter the Matrix don't need to buy any special skills to do so - that's all handled by the crapload of electronics back at the base/ship, wherever. You end up with your normal body - puny weeds in real life are puny weeds (at least in appearance) in the Matrix - athough they could still kick butt, if they took the appropriate downloads. Neo looks like Neo, whether he wants to or not. For the rest, use Dark Champions. Neo - being the Hero - gets a wider range of powers in his pool and much more points to play with. In fact, most of the people on Morpheus' team were hotshots, so going down to 100 points for the players - they get all their gear for free - might make sense. Agents get essentially the same setup, more points for super-impressive physical stat.s plus the "transform a host" power (I assume surveillance and "altering the world" is handled by the machines in the background). You get agents for top of the line opponents (and there's a limitless supply of them!) cops and thugs for low level opponents and elite military forces for middle of the road opponents. Seems like it would work pretty well for me. cheers, Mark

leaving the Tesuji Issue aside ;-) there are a couple of points worth looking at here. I have been through the "introduce DnD players to Hero" scenario multiple times, and there *are* some issues over translation. DnD combat basically runs along the lines of hit-it-until-you-can't-anymore-and-then-fall-over. The idea of blocking, dodging or maneuvering to get an advantage (knock or trip your oponent down, then take a head shot, or something similar) is foreign to the system. I'm not saying that one approach is better than the other (although I and my players prefer the Hero system, no doubt about it). DnD combat is and always has been highly abstract - that's just the way it is. Personally, I run DnD combat much more fluidly - if players want to try different things, I let them. But many (perhaps most) GM's don't. I have lost count of the number of times I have tried something heroic (sand in the eyes, pulling the rug out from under someone's feet) only to have the action ignored because it doesn't fit within the standard game mechanics. It does mean that DnD players tend to just hammer away. It also means that they are used to being able to soak up tons of "damage". I have had an ex-DnD player storm away from the table after being one-shotted by a heavy blow to the head, swearing about "what sort of stupid game lets you get taken out in one hit". He later turned into an adult and even a Hero system GM - ya gotta break things to them gently.... So having said all that, if you want to suck players into Hero system from DnD, you need to do it gently. Give them pretty vanilla characters to start with: a fighter, a thief, etc. Give them simple opponents - thugs and bandits, or a big, easy to hit (but tough) opponent that does non-lethal damage (ogre with a club). Then introduce them to the cool stuff - opponents with a few, really obvious gimmicks - fancy two sword fighting, or funky martial arts. Use a few (but only a few) fancy maneuvers on them, like delaying actions, blocking and then counter-attacking. Once they start asking "hey, can I..." they are hooked and you can do as you will with them ....BWAHAHAHAHA! cheers, Mark

I have both run in and played 25 +25 point games. Like you, I found them to be some of the most enjoyable FH games ever. There are two benefits: the first is the sense of instant achievement from small amounts of Xp. The second is that the game actually seems a lot more "real" when the characters interact with normal NPCs instead of Kings and Dragons. In my experience that leads to a lot of fun roleplaying. Which is not to say I would want to play 25 + 25 ALL the time.... cheers, Mark

Funnily enough, the three characters cited came from my sengoku game :-) cheers, Mark

Two books not listed, both of which would make damn fine RPG settings - and define another genre - are Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny and Gather, Darkness by Fritz Lieber. These are both "apocalypse-by-design" where the old hi-tech world has *mostly* collapsed, for reasons not really explained - but the hint is that it was done on purpose - and those who control the remaining technology pose as priests or gods and pretend it's magic. cheers, Mark

>>>quote:Originally posted by Markdoc Two CSL: 5 pts per DC (limit: only to do damage -1) - can apply to either HTH or to ranged combat. [/b] ...but not both.<<<< But of course. I should have added that :-)