Legendsmiths

Just had a brainstorm as I was running the numbers. What I was coming up with wasn't all that different from the standard modifiers. Which got me thinking. Why not use a standard x3 STUNx. Period. Then, for any BODY that get's through apply the normal STUNx (for killing attacks) to the BODY that gets through defenses. So, an 8 BODY attack to the head against 12 PD and 6 rPD would do: 24 - 12 = 12 STUN + 2 BODY x 5 = 22 STUN. This attack would have done 40 STUN - 12 = 28 STUN. Using Keneton's method, it would do 24 STUN (12 x 2). Now, if it was a 6 BODY attack, it would do: Mine: 18 -12 = 6 + 0 BODY x 5 = 6 STUN. Keneton's: 12 STUN Standard: 30 - 12 = 18 STUN. So, using my system (which may actually be what Keneton meant), small hits are minimized and big hits are subdued.

Thanks for the shout-out, Keneton. So, in your "BEST" solution. Target gets hit for 6 body and has 6 PD on the head. This causes 18 STUN - 6 for defense = 12 * 2 = 24 STUN? Is that what you meant by apply the Normal Stun modifier from the Hit Location table? In my local discussions we are going to abandon random hit locations unless someone makes a placed shot. Called shots will still be allowed. This is how we've been playing npcs but not pcs, so this is an easy change for us to make. I like the BEST solution. I think we'll try that. We like crits and such, so we'll keep that, but I think it's all good. So, to summarize: Normal Damage: No change. Killing Damage: STUNx x3, apply normal STUNx after armor. BODY damage is deal with normally. I like that. It's simple, keeps things marginal, and works with existing rules and charts. Thanks man.

I have a problem with both. Take an average fighter. He's got PD 6 and rPD 6. He stops 12 stun on a hit and 6 body. Body damage is working fine, no problems there. However, hit him with a DC 8 attack in the head and he is now taking 40 STUN total, 28 that get through. Granted that is a head shot. Mathematically I think the problem is that defense vs. STUN is only getting doubled, not tripled. 1 pt of armor stops 1 STUN, not 3, but it stops 1 Body. In effect, it stops the Body damage from a 1 DC attack, but only 1/3 of the STUN. Usually, 1/3 STUN defense comes from the player in the form of their natural PD, and that leaves 1/3 that gets through. Really not much problem there except that the range of STUN is such that in a heroic game, low defenses get overwhelmed quickly. However, raising defenses isn't the answer since the characters can become nigh-invulnerable against weaker attacks. As I see it, -1 STUN/DC seems about right. If in that 40 STUN hit he actually took 32, 20 would get through. He would still be stunned, but that 8 STUN makes a big diff in a fight. Now I don't think this is terribly broken, and use of Damage Reduction can cover it, but I was wondering if anyone else felt the same way.

My campaign has been running for a while now and we are running into STUN issues. With the mega-damage that large creatures bring, characters are usually 1 hit away from being out of the fight due to STUN. Hero's design preference for superheroic combat certainly is obvious here, considering the amount of STUN most attacks can cause relative to the amount of defense a character can have. Has anyone else dealt with this issue and how? I've tried the variant STUN rules from FH and don't like them. I think they are too soft. From my assessment, it seems like STUN should be dealt at about 80% of what it is now. This lead me to the idea that higher point characters should buy damage reduction to acheive this. On one level I like this solution. It allows the player to make a choice. If they want a "tough" guy, then they have to buy Damage Reduction. When bought STUN only, it actually isn't too expensive, especially when built like Combat Luck. I think I have 25% DR vs. PD or ED (STUN Only) at 4 pts. I've thought about modifying the hit location chart and making chest 2.5x, Head 4x, Vitals 3x, and so on. That just seems a bit much. As a campaign rule, STR currently costs x2 and Deadly Blow uses variant pricing of 2/DC, 4/DC, 6/DC for each of its levels (instead of 4, 7, 10 for +3 DC). I have only 1 really strong character, and only 1 character with Deadly blow. At 145 pts (started at 75) most are doing 8 DCs in combat. It's not so much the bad guys I'm concerned with, it's the players getting that one big hit.

On the issue of impairing and disabling wounds, I do want to say that I do not apply a penalty to the CON roll to avoid the effects. So, if a character takes an 11 pt disabling wound to the arm and then makes a straight CON roll they simply have an 11 pt wound. We felt that an 11 pt wound was punishment enough. That still requires a significant number of active points in Healing to repair.

Yeah, fight-heal-fight gets old. There's nothin' quite like gettin' a 14 point disabling wound to the head, suffering brain damage, and then having the party petition the temple of "healing" to perform the necessary mojo to heal. Not to mention it took a boatload of cash. 'course that's what you get for "leaping into the fire" as it were.

Well, here's the system I use and my players actually dig it. 1. Track BODY wounds individually. 2. If a wound is impairing, add "!". If disabling, add "!!". Now, healing dice, whether actual body healing or simple healing, must heal a wound all-or-nothing. This means that minor wounds are simple to heal, major wounds are not. Because of the all or nothing nature I allow multiple attempts at healing. STUN in this case is irrelivant (maximum anyway) and simple healing will always heal STUN even if the BODY of the wound is not. Impairing wounds require an extra 2d6 to heal, disabling 4d6. So, a person who takes a 7 pt impairing wound (i.e. they failed the CON roll), will require enough simple or body healing to restore 7+ BODY at a single use, plus an additional 2d6. If I used 9d6 simple healing, I would roll 7d6 and hope to generate 7 BODY. Wait a minute, you say. 9d6 simple healing is 90 active points. Yes it is. This system is designed so that low-power healers will be able to deal with non-impairing/disabling wounds of up to 7-8 BODY, assuming BODY healing (i.e. 5d6 BODY healing restores 5d6 cp of BODY). I haven't decided what to do with someone who is at -50 STUN and whether 3d6 simple healing applied repeatedly can restore them to the concious. I'm more focused on BODY anyway. We've been playing with this for a while and significant wounds have been quite dramatic and fun.

The question is, raising the level of lethality from the avg man or from the avg hero. Your average hero will have enough STR to bump up the damage of the sword by 1 DC. If you use critical hits, then any roll less than half the number needed to hit does max damage. You could also increase the Body X for hit locations. This might be a better route than bumping the DC of weapons. You may also need to look at the level of threat you are posing to the players. The "avg man" is a 25pt character with stats of 8 down the line. A DC 5 sword attack (broadsword + STR) will, on average, cause an imparing wound, and can cause a disabling wound quite easily. Either of those attacks will probably do enough STUN to take him out, at which point he will bleed to death. Fairly realistic. Not as realistic as some games, but certainly enough to make a point. I play with crits, impairing, disabling wounds, and bleeding. This is enough realism for me and yet still keeps the game cinematic.

So, a 6d6 Suppress PRE (30 pts), Lingering (1 min) +3/4, would cost 52 apts. Limit it to fear effects only (-1), for a real of 26. Add a Linked (-1/2), PRE +20 (20 pts), Only While Suppressing (-1/2), Fear only (-1), for a real of 7. That's pretty reasonable. You could get their PRE down to about 0, on average, easily, and then scare the patooty out of 'em. The only problem is that they could still use their EGO to resist the PRE attack. What about: Suppress EGO instead. This suppress will get the average man down to 0 EGO. Mind Control could be linked to the suppress, and then the target could be made ascared. Thoughts?

I guess my point is, why spend 15 points to drain 1d6 PRE at range when, for purposes of a PRE attack, if PRE is suddenly lower (which in a Heroic game will probably happen) than Ego, I essentially get little to no effect. It seems Mind Control or pure PRE dice are the way to go, and skip the drain.

The other thing that compounds it is that you resist a PRE attack with the greater of your EGO or PRE. So draining PRE really won't do anything to their resistance. Am I wrong?

I agree with Hugh. I think that was just clarified. This 1-2 punch does seem a good way to go, but it is still expensive to use a drain for a "boo" effect.

Thanks, I was only looking at the per die cost of the drain (15 pts) and what that amount got you as a PRE attack increase. Typically fear effects are modeled using PRE Drain. I just don't see the advantage. The point about reducing the target's PRE which will impact other PRE based skills is important. But, if I'm looking for the "big scare", I'm better off buying PRE for an attack. If it's fear only, I'd just apply a -1 limitation which would then get me +6d6 for 15 points vs. 2d6 of PRE Drain (fear only). 7 pts of effect vs. 21 is a pretty big difference.

Why would I want to pay 15 pts for a 1d6 PRE Drain at Range instead of buying 3d6 of PRE Attack? It seems that the 3 point reduction the Drain would get pales in comparison to the 9 pt value of the straight attack?

I'm a big fan of GURPS and have been playing it for a long time. When FRED came out we wanted to give normal level Hero another try. Fundamentally, Hero will always have that cinematic feel. But I have been very satisfied with the "realism" the game does offer. My only beef has been leaping, which I came up with a simple fix. I think you could easily change the scale for combat to 1m per hex without changing the powers. Keep 1" equal to 2m. This means that your running inches actually indicate your half move in 1m hexes. It's a simple conversion, and ensures that powers are still on the same Hero scale. The problem we ran into with GURPS is that fantasy/sci-fi races are fundamentally unbalanced relative to humans, and that we could never get action movie cinematic reality to work quite right. Sure Hero damage isn't entirely realistic, but it's not entirely unrealistic either. It's nice that when 3 normal guys gang up on another normal guy and beat him with their fists, the victim will end up in a coma but not dead, unlike GURPS where after a 10 second beating the victim is pulp. In Hero you can still suffer a nice head shot and get taken out, but its much more difficult. The mods are a little less detailed, but they capture all of the detail that's necessary. I've always enjoyed GURPS gunplay, and always will. However, a recent gun battle in Hero was a lot closer to something out of Bad Boyz II or The Big Hit than GURPS ever was. When the dust settled, we had just as much fun, the players weren't mortally wounded or maimed, and it moved very quickly. As for speed differences, I don't mind that either. In fact, I prefer it. I like to think of the 6 second action cycle for a normal guy as hesitation, lack of cool, and being unskilled when it comes to survival. Compared to GURPS, he is actually getting a full GURPS move (6m) plus a full attack. So, his lack of skill really results in him getting an equivalent GURPS action every 3 seconds, which seems very appropriate for someone unsure about combat. I like them both, but am definitely more in a Hero mood right now. I do miss defaults, and 1/2 point skills, but overall its okay. For heroic fantasy I think I really prefer Hero as long as a good magic system is used and mages are more than dark-age superheroes.

The issue of a common tongue is a sticky one. Depending on which era of history you look at there have been several "common tongues". In the Roman empire it was obviously Latin. Today it is primarily English. Now, these were still regional, but huge regions none the less. In my campaigns the dominant culture/power is the common tongue. I've run games with intricate language models and for the most part players don't really care. First, the entire party needs to communicate, with each other and the npcs, and intricate language webs make that challenging. Second, depending on the campaign, language should be a plot device more than anything. The nice thing about Hero is that languages are cheap, but not too cheap. So running a game where you play a linguist doesn't require too many points. Culture is learned, and the primary mechanism for that is language. Cultures will solidify along language barriers, and that should help drive your map of the world. How that relates to race is up to you. I prefer to separate the genotypical information from the cultural information, so that I could have, essentially, american elves and german elves that would be culturally different, but physically the same. An american elf would have more in common culturally with an american dwarf than with the german elf. Then of course you need to consider how much of being a particular race translates into culture. If all elves have nightvision, american and german elves may share a love of night-life, celebrated in a similar fashion, that no other american races enjoy. So, how much of culture is derived from the physical, as well as how much is derived from society? MMMM, yummy food for thought. The danger is that you make your racial/cultural/social/professional packages too complicated and intricate and no one can understand how to make a character. My recommendation is to make your "templates" as stereotypical as possible, and describe possible non-standard variants that are developed on a case-by-case.

Exactly. A leap of 14m by a strong character is just rediculous. BUT, that doesn't make the game unplayable. The beauty of Hero is that a simple change, like halving leaping distance, solves that problem. My house rules for "dicing" a leap are just to make that an exciting game mechanic-al situation.

I simply halve the distance. I only allow NC leap if they have a half move running start. So, average man can stand and leap 2m, running leap 4m. Strong man can stand and leap 4m and running leap 8m. I also require an attack roll to hit the hex/land safely plus a Leap dice roll to see how far they made it. Leap dice are # of inches as normal dice, count BODY as .5 m. Add that to .5m * #". So, a character with a 4" leap rolls 4d6, counts the BODY. That's how many half-meters he leaps + 2m when running. If standing, he leaps half that. This gives a nice average, allows people to buy extra inches of leap, and keeps it realistic. Great for trying to make it over a chasm or pit. I also allow skill levels with leap to either add to the attack roll, making tight landings easier, or to add extra dice to the leap without changing the max. So, if the leaper above put 2 levels on the leap, he would roll 6d6 but pick the best 4. Pushing is also allowed at +1" w/ Ego roll, +1" per 5 success thereafter. This is only appropriate for heroic games, and is a total house rule, but it makes action scenes involving leaping quite fun. I do the same with damage increases. If the damage is increased beyond the max of the weapon, roll it anyway and just pick the highest. If the damage is killing, roll the increased damage but only allow the max (e.g. a 1d6K is increased to 3d6, but since 2d6 is the max, 3d6 are rolled but no more than 12 damage can be done). This rewards a haymaker or maneuver without unbalancing the game.

Was there a kitchen sink in there? I think there was, I was just blinded by the rest of the items. I like the tinkerer's pouch. Thanks.

So, let me see if I can sum this up. If you have a package deal that forces a player to have specific powers, he doesn't have as much control over his character's development? I don't see a huge problem with that. 1. Keep racial abilities to a minimum. 2. Use everyman skills to accent racial differences. 3. Characters must pay for racial disadvantages. What this means is that the mandatory racial abilities will dictate what type of characters get played. If you have a big burly race, the only time they get played will be when someone wants to be big and burly? Is that so bad? Should they be as good a wizard or thief as a human? If everyone pays for their abilities, by default it is balanced. The one tweak you could make is altering their characteristic maxima as a mandatory racial disad. Obviously if all you are doing is increasing the maxima it isn't a disad, but usually you want to decrease it as well. Take Dwarves for example. Why force a -2 DEX on all Dwarves? They aren't clumsy, so that doesn't make any sense. What you want to say is that they won't be olympic gymnasts so, their max dex is 16. But they are tough, so their max CON is 23 and they get 1/2 END on their STR (or something). Both Humans and Dwarves start out with 10 DEX, but the Dwarf just doesn't have the potential. If the race really is different (base) then do this -1" Running, and -2" Running Max. Using the Age disad as a guide, if the bad maxima outweigh the good you could award a -5 or -10 disad. Take a race of pixie-fairies. -10 STR (base 0), but I don't want a 10 STR fairy either. So, I set their max at 5. Now, I've compensated for the STR reduction (-10 points), but I need to compensate for the max reduction. I raise their max speed to 5 and their DEX to 25, along with a BODY max of 10 (and base -6), CON max of 13 (and base -3). Running is -4" (max -4"), but they get flight at 0 END (magical) 6". And so on, you get the idea. This balances well and helps enforce things like avoiding STR 20 hobbits and the like. I hope this helps. It does take some thought, but it makes for very balanced and interesting races. My players have really enjoyed the detail and variability, and no one has complained about not being able to make a STR 20 fairy or a Speed 5 DEX 20 Ogre.

LANGUAGES Well, there's the realistic way and the heroic way. HEROIC Establish a common tongue. Make it "easy". Every adventurer must buy it, but the common folk do not necessarily speak it. There is essentially 1 language per major cultural group (race or ethos). REALISTIC There may be a couple of common tongues. Not every adventurer speaks them. The common folk probably don't unless they are merchants. There will be as many languages as the geography creates relative to cultural groups. This can get very complicated. Many dialiects will also exist, and in some cases may actually have fully diverged into their own languages (e.g. Dutch and German). You need to decide how important/fun it is to deal with languages. NAMING The language name should reflect the culture. If your elves are called elves, then their language should be elvish. If your elves are the noldar and sindar, then the elvish languages might be sindarin and noldarin, with the term "elvish" representing the language family. This also applies to the people. What does an elf call himself? Man? Sindar? Ehman? When they came into contact with other language speakers, what was the result? Were they named by the foreigners (Germans from Germania, but the germans call themselves "dutch", reserving the term germania for greater teutonia), or did the foreigners adopt the native name as a cognate (russian from russia, and they call themselves russki). Kind of like thinking of a tomato as a vegetable when it is technically a fruit. Just think of how the cultural contact was made, and how that might impact the name. If the meeting was peaceful, chances are the naming will be more cognate than applied. Also, think about the point of view of your cyclopedia. Are you providing the native names of the races, or the "common" names. Is there a slang term that is used often. Fundamentally, if you want to get crazy, you need to add a name matrix from one language to the other (i.e. list "elf" in the most common languages). BOTTOM LINE: what will be fun? Don't overdo it if your players don't care.

The way I handle races wrt stats is as follows: Racial averages are assigned as +/- points. So, a strong race would get +2-3 STR, while a weak one would get -2-3. Then, every race gets a Modified Characteristics Maximum Disad. For most races this would be 0. For others, it might be -5 or -10, but only if the maxima are significantly reduced/modified. This is especially appropriate for small races, but not of much use for big races unless they are exceptionally bad in some areas. I use the age disad as a guide, and essentially guestimate. This is a suggestion from FH, and I think it works very well. Characters still have to pay double over 20, unless the maxima are changed. The fact that it is a mandatory disad is a fair compensation, without directly giving "bonus" points that is inevitably the problem with maxima changes. For example. I create a "strong" race with +5 STR. I then say that as a rule, char max is racial average +10. Now a character of this racial type is created to have 25 STR. This essentially costs the char a total of 15 points, whereas it should cost him 20.... he essentially got 5 points for free. Now, a fair idea might be to "balance" this by saying the race is especially ungainly. So, -2 DEX, for a total of -6 points, which basically balances out the STR increase. However, most characters will want to buy up their DEX, especially as a fighter, so this really becomes a futile exercise, especially if the race really isn't ungainly, they just aren't particularly athletic (e.g. Dwarves). An answer would be to instead balance the maxima, possibly include the stat increase, and leave it at that. So, +5 STR (max 20), +0 DEX (max 18). Combined with some other maxima reductions (e.g. PRE), you could make this worth a -5 Disad, but not drastically upset the point balance of the game. The sense I got from FH was to avoid altering maxima drastically without some compensation, but avoid paying for it as a 1-for-1 increase since that forces characters to spend points they may not necessarily want to. Increasing maxima in response to decreases is *fairly* balanced, and doesn't monkey with point costs too much.

Sweet. I definitely would prefer them over donkeys.

Isn't a burro and a donkey the same thing? Or are they different? My only problem with donkey is they are slow-ish (although walking speed is fine), kinda ornery, require special food (unless moving through grasses), and are real heavy if you need to pick them up. They do carry more than goats tho, which can be quite useful. Seriously, aren't burros and donkeys the same?

Agreed Arthur. Otherwise everyone in Europe is incredibly scientific. When I was in highschool in Germany I believe one day in gym class went like this (in German of course): Teacher: "Weight?" Me: "Seventy Five Kilograms." If I had launched into a discussion about weight vs. mass, I would have been doing push ups until dawn, let alone if I had answered 160 pounds, or the number of newtons my mass exerted. It's also not a translation issue -- Germans have a distinct concept of mass and weight, just as we do. The europeans don't seem to be confused by using kg as a unit of weight, why should we be? Some people get a little carried away and lose sight of things. Oh well, that's the beauty of language. So many things to so many people.