Legendsmiths

Aren't RPGs are all about being more than you are? *sigh* apperently the case is closed and we can return to our discussion of fantasy $ systems.

Fundamentally, that's the way it would work I imagine since that is how LR is built.

I think with the amount of information that has to be tracked in combat I think this would just add one more thing. 2 guys fight, one DEX 11, one 12. Dex 11 has his dagger out and the other has his sword. The guy with the dagger can now hold his action before the guy with the sword, waits for him to miss, and then haymakers. Is that right? What if he decides to cast a spell instead? I think it just creates too many questions while adding very little to the game. Weapon length already plays a factor if you apply it, and I think this does enough.

Keith, for the record, I appreciate your attempts at civility. I didn't realize it was necessary to establish ones credentials before making comments on this forum. Good thing... I would imagine that there is a hefty amount of learning floating around that chooses not to comment on what is fundamentally a matter of: a) personal preference and sense of the dramatic well, more of A really. I hope the slaughterj got what he was looking for.

I guess that sums it up, Assault. Economics are a very subjective thing. "A fantasy $ system" is certainly not one-size-fits-all. Every GM has to either: a) take into consideration all of the economic elements of his/her game (i.e. magic or lack of it, industry, disease, communication, travel, etc.) buy into an established world where these issues have been thought out or ignored (as the case more often is). A cool product would be "And a 10' Pole" but with useful price lists built on a variety of economic models.

That was my thought as well.

Sounds good, Galadorn. We're also incorporating these ideas into our official FH setting.

Everyone seems focused on the medevil economy. I would argue that most fantasy settings are actually closer to renaissance or even pre-industrial 17th&18th century economies. Why? Healthcare (magic) Substitute for electricity (magic) Cottage industry (depending on magic) Plus other issues. I believe the FH price list is fairly accurate. It puts the unskilled laborer (almactan, sp? said this earlier) in a position of having the entire family work. Other prices can extend from that. FH does include the time to craft items (weaponsmith and armorsmith). I built a spreadsheet that takes into account the craft penalty, cost of materials, and time to come up with pricing. My prices for armor are a little higher than FH, but overall the pricing in FH is fair, and certainly a step above most fantasy economies. "And a 10' Pole" is a good resource, but like many such books the author takes liberty with the data. Is it accurate? Certainly more than I could make up BUT does that fit my economy? Given the impact of magic and alchemy on supporting technologies, would it really take the historical length of time to craft a sword? Only you as a GM can answer that. The important thing is to be consistant, to ensure that the average SKILLED laborer can survive in the economy. One thing to consider is that like calendaring systems if you make the fantasy setting too foreign your players won't enjoy it. I'm not saying to price everything in dollars and have everyon pay 30% income tax, but if you model your economy after a modern setting, substituting magic for industry, you can come up with a conversion for your favorite currency and the fantasy currency. That way a GM can easily come up with pricing models that translate into the setting directly. Player: "I'm looking for a cheap, quick meal before we head to the dungeon." GM: "A street vendor you pass is selling meat and bread for 3 sp". (converts $6 to the local currency) The best price list is one everyone knows.

I would imagine that if it has the Spell (-1/2) and RSR (Appropriate Arcana) limitation that the real cost is div by 3. Otherwise, the abilities are probably full cost. The advantage being they aren't spells. Div cost by 3 is essentially like putting the powers in a framework and you could certainly make that a part of the world.

Shades of Black is a 5E adventure. I thought Kandris Seal was as well when I saw it at GenCon. The other material is fairly easily used with 5E. I believe the main rulebook discusses the transition from 4E to 5E fairly well (although my memory could be off).

I'll second that notion. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Here, here.

I agree, eliminate persistance. All of the spells in grimoire are built, I believe, along the guidelines that will be used in Turakian Age. I would tell your players that they pretty much have to build their spells in the same manner (there is a core set of limitaitons). Additionally, be sure to set their expectations by saying, "I don't think I can account for every situation so if I see a power structure that is out of whack for the feel of the game I'm trying to create, be preparde I may ask you to redesign or dismantle that spell." You also need to seriously consider the impact of teleportation, tunneling, flying, and long-distance communication. If you make such abilities too easy and don't account for them in your world-model you may end up with a broken world.

All of our races have unique names even if they are similar to standard fantasy races. Then we make the standard fantasy racial names the derogitory. I think a perfect example of this would be from Tolkein. The hobbits being called halflings. The advantage is that the names are already in the vernacular. Then the true name of the race becomes formal, and even snobbish: " I am Nom-ri, and expect you to acknowledge me as such." "Dwarf is what you are," spits on the ground, "and dwarf is how you will die...." Simple, easy, and sounds good. Just a thought. IMO, things like "pinkie, tree hugger" and so on seem out of place and a little too modern for me. That said, here's a stab: dwarf: grubbies, dirt-monkeys, picks elf: fairies, greens halfling: stunties

Hey, Sly. Just to chime in you are one of the people that my company Legendsmiths is targeting. We want to see Hero succeed and have wonderful choices of settings to play in. Most of the Fantasy material up to this point is of the toolkit nature, meaning they are collections of options, provided in great detail, to help you decide the game you want to play. One of the reasons many other games seem so easy to pick up is there are limited options as to what you can do. Not so in Hero. The setting books, such as the forthcoming Turakian Age from Hero and Legendsmiths own Narosia: Sea of Tears provide you with a concrete vision of fantasy and how all of the genre specific rules are applied. Our Narosia setting will be very different from Turakian Age, as will Hero's Valdoran (sp?) Age Swords & Sorcery setting. If you are patient, you may want to wait a bit before you spring the system on your group. If you can plop down a setting book and say, "let's play this... make characters", and plop down a copy of Hero System Sidekicks (all the Hero rules in 128 pages) you may get a different response than if plop down FRED and FH and say, "Go." I ran at a Con this weekend (UCon in Ann Arbor, MI) and got a lot of great resposne from the players on both Hero (they had never played before) and our setting. At that same con I played 2 d20 games. What was really stark for me was what I walked away with. The d20 games had a great story. The conflicts we faced were intriguing. But what was lacking was action. The combats we had in d20 were very lack luster. In fact, for anybody that wasn't a spellcaster, they were pretty much roll-damage, roll-damage, until the foe was dead. For the spellcasters, it was more about what spell to cast, than how to cast it. How is that exciting? Gaming is about choices, IMO, and roll-damage-repeat offers no choice, only spectating. Hero is action. Hero allows you make the action of any scene exciting. GURPS does this as well. The difference between GURPS and Hero in this regard is that Hero scales to allow action on an epic scale while GURPS maintains a level of realism that is very cool, but also very real (i.e. a Dragon will kick your bee-hiney). Additionally, Hero's rules are consistant and flexible enough to handle nearly any situation. We had a scene where 4 weak npcs leapt onto a strong hero. How do you handle that in d20 or Hackmaster? Once grappled, how do you handle the combined strength of 4 creatures trying to pull you down? Hero handles this easily, and in epic fashion the strong hero was not dragged down. (for our Hero listeners out there, the 4 npcs were STR 6, but since there were 4 it was effectively STR 16 (+5 for each x2 creatures)). In another scene a zombie grabbed the arm of the strong hero. Not wanting to drop his axe, he 1-handed lifted the zombie into a boiling pot (-5 STR for a 1-handed lift). Now, those are simple rules that enabled a fun, exciting scene that had the players shoutin' "hoody hoo!". Better yet, they were simple rules that didn't require complex tables or explanations and the real-world action moved just about as fast as the game-world action. Now, going beyond the coolness of those scenes, in many other systems why would you bother having 4 weak npcs grapple, or grapple with a zombie? If the system doesn't support the mechanics to make such a scene possible, why would you consider it? So, you need to think about what you want out of your gaming experience? If you want a game that allows detailed, yet gameable, epic action, I think Hero is where you want to be. In my experience, once you play a game that allows you to make actions that directly impact the flow of conflict, you can't go back. I don't really enjoy games that don't allow me to transcend the typical roll to damage methodology.

We do 2 things w/ KB. 1st, races: it costs no points, but for -1" KB, you take +1" falling damage, and -1" Leap. Conversely, for +1" KB, you take -1" falling damage, and +1 Leap. This should be a SFX for mass, and the physical limitation associated with it. It's cool 'cause it works in the effect of mass in falling and leaping without altering STR directly. It's an extension of the mass factor option in leaping, but seems balanced by the KB aspect without having to pay points for it. 2nd, KB in combat. We used an enhanced knockdown rule. If you take more than half BODY before armor, you are knocked back 1" if you fail a DEX roll. If you take more than BODY, you fall down as well. How does racial KB factor into this? The attacker's racial KB modifier adds to the amount of KB, and yours subtracts from it. So an Ogre (-1 KB) hits a Halfling (+1 KB) for more than half the halfing's BODY. He therefore suffers 2" of KB automatically, +1 " if he fails a DEX roll. If you want slightly more realistic KB, just make each 1" of KB = 1m instead of 2m. This is dramatic, fun, but not overwhelming (characters flying 6m with every hit).

I agree. But since I have to codify this situation for other GMs then I need more concrete guidelines than that. Something like: 1. Make a DEX roll to make sure you went into the quicksand with your head above the surface. 2. 100kg of man+gear will sink after 4 phases of action. If he takes no action and makes a DEX roll he will recover 1 phase of action. The quicksand has 10 STR. If the quicksand can lift the character with its casual STR, there is no fear of sinking. If the quicksand cannot hold the character up with +5 STR, the character will sink immediately. 3. Swimming in quicksand is -1". Using non-combat movement requires a DEX roll or lose an additional phase of action. 4. STR vs. STR is required to extract oneself. If a branch or rope/vine are available, the character may use his STR to move without losing a phase of action (relative to sinking).

So, easier to float, don't panic, vacuum effect. Knee-Deep: 8 STR TK, AE. If you are trying to extract just one leg, you are -5 STR. If you can grab a branch you can use your full STR to pull yourself out. If totally submerged in it add +5 STR to the TK. On your initial step into it, make a DEX roll or you fall face first and begin to drown immediately, but luckily you can use your hands to push off the bottom (vs. 13 STR due to being submerged). Waist-Deep: Now it gets tricky. Again make a DEX roll to keep your head above the surface. Now however the fact that you are touching the bottom does little to get you out. You will have to wade vs. 8 STR to get to the side, each point of BODY you win by = 1/2" of movement. If submerged, you have nothing to push off of and must win a STR vs. STR to swim, at -2" of swimming. If you use non-combat swimming, add +5 STR to the Quicksand. "Bottomless": Well, it might as well be. Make a DEX roll to keep your head above the sand, but now you are up to your armpite. You can swim, as in Waist-Deep, but now gravity is against you and such struggling will cause you to make another DEX roll or slip deeper (neck), which adds +5 STR to the quicksand for purposes of escaping. Please, anyone, add to this and critique it. I am running an adventure that will have some quicksand as a harrying trap in the middle of a fight.

Maybe Change Environment, -2" Swimming, and then something to represent if you struggle you sink faster. http://science.howstuffworks.com/quicksand.htm

This is for a heroic level game (100 pt characters) so 1d6 swimming suppress might be too much. I think that's headed down the right path though.

Any suggestions on how to handle quicksand and its effects?

For the material components pouch you could do something like this: Activation 14-, Ablative (sort of). Basically there is a 14- to get the right spell component. If the activation roll fails, that item isn't available any more and the activation roll goes down by 1. This means that spell cannot be cast until the pouch is repleneshed at least +1 at the cost of, say, 25gb/+1. This begs the question of whether he could have an extra pouch on hand. I would say, sure, at the cost of 14*25gp = 350gp for essential a backup of "+1" replacements. You could of course make a +1 cost whatever you want, but more than 50gp would probably be a bit much.

In Legendsmiths Narosia: Sea of Tears campaign, mages are required to have a personal focus (like a wand or staff, but it can be anything). If a mage does not have his focus, spellcasting gets more difficult AND more dangerous. Each spell also has an expendable component associated with it that serves 2 purposes: 1. If combined with your personal focus you get a bonus to casting. 2. It can be used to compensate for the lack of personal focus. So, if you capture a mage and take away his personal focus and any consumable foci he is significantly hindered. It works very well, and also makes combat interesting as everyone wants to get to the mage to swipe his focus. The rules aren't up yet but they should be soon at http://www.narosia.com.

I did look at the ODD math. In your example, that head shot above would cause 28 STUN, only 4 more than your method. That's not a huge differnence in my book, especially considering some of the anomalies I noted. I am encouraging Heroic Toughness is what we call it. It is essentially DR. We have a point limit prereq to encourage only powerful characters to have it. We have 4 levels: 25% STUN, 50% STUN, 25% BODY/50% STUN, 50% BOTH. That seems to work pretty well. I think once you facter in the Heroic Resilience I outlined above things'll be good. I appreciate the kicker tho. You sparked some good idears.

After doing more math (which I love), it is pretty clear that this won't really work and in some cases is worse than the original system. e.g. PD 8 rPD 8 hit for 10 BODY in the chest. Mine: 30 - 8 + 2 * 3 = 28 Keneton's: (30 - 8) x 1 = 22 Original: 30 - 8 = 22 Poop. Take that as a head shot Mine: 30 - 8 + 2 * 5 = 32 Keneton's: (30 - 8) x 2 = 44 Original: 50 - 8 = 42 Here Keneton's system does more than the original. Which got me thinking. Ideally, the base x3 STUNx would actually be 2.5, roughly 80% of the original. -1 STUN/DC would accomplish this, but would be a pain in the but to calculate all of the time. Someone here had suggested that calculating 25% of their STUN everytime would also be annoying. So, I eliminate random hitlocations (except for placed and called shots). That gets rid of the "STUN Lottery". Then, I create the following ability: Heroic Resiliance +2 PD or +2 ED, only vs. STUN (-1/2), cannot exceed base PD/ED (-1/2) Cost: 1 pt per +2 PD or ED This way, if you want to be tough you can, it doesn't alter the existing STUN rules (keeping things compatible), and doesn't involve multiplication. It's cheap, but is still an ability that must be purchased by "tough guys". 3 pts for +6 PD is still 3 pts. Since it is governed by the character's PD/ED, I'm not worried about the NCM issue, since this technically would take PD beyond the NCM. The lack of random locations also has the interesting side effect of encouraging a practice many undertook which was to wear armor only on vital locations. Light Plate Breastplate and leather everywhere else. In a metagame sense, no one is going to target your arms/legs... why take the penalty for reduced damage (although an impairing wound to the leg can take you out of the fight, so there is still value). Most combatants would be satisfied with the body shot. This helps those characters who wish to be less encumbered by armor. While I really like the elegance of Keneton's system, I don't think it gets me much in the long run. I like having locations so I don't want to get rid of them.

Should I do the same for Normal Damage? 8d6 N does 8 BODY & 24 STUN. If any BODY gets through (unlikely) then it would use the standard STUNx as for Killing damage. This reduces the amount of STUN normal attacks do slightly, relative to a killing attack. Is this good? Bad? It is further stressed by the extreme bell curve introduced by multiple dice and may really be unnecessary. Although, 48 N STUN to the head (2 PD) = 94 STUN. Using this system, it would be 16 BODY - 2 = 14 BODY x 5 = 70 STUN + 48 STUN = 118 STUN. Okay, probably not a good idea.