Ozymandias

Re: Hero System Bestiary: How to build an armadillo? You just gave me the idea of a lifetime for a random encounter for my new campaign. Dire Armadillos. Or Undead Armadillos. Or Undead Dire Armadillos.

Re: How do you Hero GMs prepare for new campaigns? One of the problems that I've found when starting out, was that those benchmarks aren't always helpful. Knowing a Vampire Lord's Presence doesn't really help, when there are tons of vampire novels, or other stories, over several genres, and a Vampire's presence is not necessarily the same between different stories. It's even less helpful when the genre of the game you're running isn't one known for the being referenced as the benchmark. So how I do it is I sit down with the group and say: Most CVs should be between X and Y, and the maximum CV should be Z, but only for Martial maneuvers/rare attacks/etc. Then I do the same for DCs, Defenses (resistant and non), and Characteristics. Then I say the AP cap on Powers, and any other restrictions on powers. It will end up working out that everything falls within the ranges I'm looking for, but usually I err lower, especially the low end of the ranges, since they rarely hit the lowest of the range, but more often go for the higher of the range. If something looks amiss (say, an old wizard with a 20 STR, or a Sci Fi mechanic on a non-military ship with a ton of CSLs with Blaster Weapons), I'll talk it over with them. If it seems like it's valid for their background and concept, I'll accept it. If it looks like a Munchkinism attempt, I'll ask them to change it.

Re: Hero System Bestiary: How to build an armadillo? Technically correct, but it all depends on whether he is trying to represent a specific species of Armadillo, or whether he is trying to represent a generic representation of a stereotypical Armadillo True, though I'd potentially buy a bit of knockback resistance, to counter some of the +12m Knockback from the Diminuative Size Drawback.

Re: Hero System Bestiary: How to build an armadillo? Maybe an activation roll, and/or a limitation that it doesn't cover the underside of the armadillo (Which I wouldn't necessarily count as a hit location, since it would be pretty hard to hit normally, if it wasn't flipped over, for example). I'd have to guess that 2 rPD/2 rED would be appropriate, since I've found some statistics on Armadillo armor (Tensile Strength 20 MPa, Shear Strength 18 MPa, Toughness 1.1 MJ/m^3), but I haven't been able to fine anything to compare them to, since all I've found is the strengths and toughnesses of metal, which, due to the huge gap in strengths, doesn't really help.

Re: Hero System Bestiary: How to build an armadillo? Maybe give it a maneuver of Martial Block, to simulate them rolling into an armadillo ball (yes, I know that most armadillo species can't do this, because they have too many/too bulky plates, but it's iconic of the animal, so screw "realism"). Also, they are good diggers, so Tunnelling would be appropriate. Density (with -1 no STR increase) might also be appropriate, since they have increased mass, due to their plates, and will sink in water unless they inflate their lungs to intentionally float. On that side, they have very powerful lungs, so perhaps one level of Life support: Extended breathing. They have poor eyesight, which deserves a complication, but they hunt via smell, so they should get a bonus to PER rolls with smelling (See Bears in the HSB). Despite their short legs, they are pretty fast on their feet, so they should probably have their running increased to 5m or 6m, and their swimming increased to 3m. That's all I can think of, right now.

Re: New Magic PDF From Steve: DESERT MAGIC More or less, I mean Arcane Gadgets. Making stuff like Golemns, or Eberron's Warforged or Homunculi aren't really necessary, since that's as simple as summon, with the appropriate costs and limitations. But preferably, it would be small stuff, largely IAF, and OAF, that could be put in a low cost VPP, or bought on it's own. For example a key which could open any door, or create a gateway between any two doors with locks. I'm not the best at describing what I'm looking for, I guess. Thinking it over It could potentially even be part of an "Expanded Enchantment" PDF, since I could reasonably reflavor some of that into a more technological version.

Re: New Magic PDF From Steve: DESERT MAGIC You have no idea how amazing this is, since this is almost exactly what I had been looking for for my new campaign setting I'm tooling together. Now, if there only were an artificing PDF *hint hint*

Re: Dodging a Mental Power Though this makes me wonder if you could dive for cover against a mental power. It would probably have to be an obvious mental power, which would be rather uncommon, but I could see someone notice an someone's activating a mental power (eyes go white/aura/whatever), and tumble behind something that blocks line of sight.

Re: Making Magic seem distinct. Mainly, I want differentiated mechanics. Capabilities I have no problem with a little overlap, since in my setting the healing priest is not necessarily obligatory. It mainly depends on the deity the priest worships or gains their power from. The cleric I mentioned from the playtest was of the goddess of freedom and revolution. As a result, the closest thing she had to healing was an Aid Body and Stun spell. Good enough to allow the heroes to press on, and win a tough fight, but it'd do nothing to make existing wounds go away. And even other clerics might not have that much. Likewise, a Wizard of the right school might know a spell of healing, making the wizard a stronger healer, in terms of existing damage. However, this would mainly be based on the choice of school or deity, and I think that I've got it as such, that the deities and schools of magic don't have an exact overlap between any two, so even if both the Wizard and the Cleric have healing spells, they should be able to seem different (The wizard would be more of a transmuter, where the Cleric would be more focused on protection) However the VPP and Multipower idea might have some weight to it. I don't like those constructions too much in Fantasy games usually, because it just doesn't feel like magic to me, so much as technological (I see it more like VPP as gadgetry and Multipowers as weapons systems, mainly because that's how I first saw them used, in a Tech-based Champions game I used to play in, but that feel has stuck with me for a while). However, if the Tuala Morn system can sort-of be a Multi-power, then maybe I could find a similar way to do things with Variable Pools.

Re: Yet another D&D to Fantasy HERO conversion Huh... I added up the points, and even though that seems huge, it still isn't that high. It's just that while when you build your own character there are much more non-combat skills thrown in there. The best advice I can give would be to cap the STR at 20 (and maybe cut his DCV down to 6), but give him the point difference in Experience points to buy skills or perks.

Re: Making Magic seem distinct. I kind of like that for combat spells, but for non-combat stuff, that tends to have high Active points, but lots of limitations. For example, all three casters in my quick little playtest had Caps of 60 active points for any Non-damage based combat utility spells, where damaging spells had caps at half of that (basically to keep Magic-users seeming magical, but not overshadowing non-magic users), however two of them (and to a lesser extent, the third) had a big spell that essentially defined their character flavor-wise. It was usually filled with tons of limitations, so in many cases, it ended up only being one or two points, and almost never applicable for any situation that the players would encounter, but it was something that made the characters feel special. The old earth elementalist wizard was an architect, so he had a spell that took a week to cast, but he could summon a house or castle built on up to 300 total points (135 Active points for the spell). The cleric of the goddess of Freedom and Revolution had a 180 Active point spell that could convince all the peasants and serfs and otherwise downtrodden in a city to rise up in revolution, after, of course a week solely devoted to making speeches, which, if she was caught by whatever tyrannical government she was inspiring the people to revolt from, would grant her and all people involved, a death sentence, and/or the Negative reputation complication, and of course the spell could only be used once a year. Even the Inquisitor, who was the least magical of the casters, had an 80 active point spell which compelled the target to tell the truth, and his next most powerful spell was a Magical Damage Negation spell, built on 30 Active points. So is there any system that can allow for these spells which are significantly more powerful, in terms of active points, but are also heavily limited to prevent their use (except, more or less, as fluff)?

I'm working on a homebrew setting for HERO, and while I pretty much have a lot of the non-mechanical stuff set (I've borrowed a lot from a couple of my old D&D settings), but one problem I've run into is trying to make spells both balanced and seem distinctive. I tested out the Turakian Age method of cutting the cost of spells by 3, but I wanted to make it less beneficial to merely dabble in magic, so that not every character would just pick up a spell or two, so I put a 10 point Perk which would allow the discount, so classes could pick up spell, if it suits their concept, but they'd have to do it at full cost. Then Spells would usually be built with the limitations OIF, Incantations, Gestures, Requires a Magic Roll, Spell, and (for Divine characters) Only when serving the god's purpose. They could add more limitations if they so chose. If they would want to upgrade OIF to OAF, they could, but generally they wouldn't use Expendable (I find it a difficult thing to balance as a GM, and it tends to have a lot of useless bookkeeping. If they want a power that can't be used often, they could buy it as Charges with increased recovery time, or Delayed Use). From the required limitations, they could cut -1/2 worth of Limitations, so if they wanted to cast without incantations and gestures, they could, or they could cast without a spell roll (however, if they did that, their focus would have to be universal, or at least couldn't be personal), or they could cast without needing a Focus. I felt like this would allow casters to still have limitations, but be able to seem distinct, since one caster might not use a Focus, where another might cast without requiring a roll. However in practice, it didn't seem to do what I'd want it to, because the divine characters didn't seem very distinct from arcane characters (for example, I had a character who was playing an inquisitor for the god of Protection and healing, and I had forgotten that he wasn't actually a divine caster, but an arcane caster, who served that god. As a result, I tried to say "No, your god would oppose you killing the surrendering Cultist" but then I realized that he wasn't a divine caster, so he didn't have that limitation), and the little that dropping a single limitation did to differentiate characters didn't really seem to do much, or at least as much as I hoped. So could people help me brainstorm on ways to make Arcane and Divine casting seem distinct, as well as add more ways to make characters feel distinct even with the same magical source. I don't really like buying spells as skills, or as "Spell Familiarities" since those seem to me to be better with predefined spell lists, and I don't really like to have predefined spell lists as anything but guidelines.

Re: Yet another D&D to Fantasy HERO conversion I like this, and I believe I will pilfer a bit from it. But as a way to introduce people to HERO, maybe it's just me, but the reason I like HERO is that you're not limited to the Class and Race constructions of other systems, so I think I'll do what I've been doing with any new players that come my way, and have them tell me the concept they want, as I walk them through how to build that concept. Kudos though, I think I might borrow some of this for NPCs, or even use the attribute packages as a quick stat-generation guide for my players.

Re: I hate naming villages/Kingdoms I tend to spend too much effort making names for my towns. However, I find that if I don't put the amount of effort I do into town names, they tend to sound lazy or same-y. However one thing I have found is that university building names can occasionally make good town names. I borrowed Marshack and Wingate from CCNY, Balliol from Oxford and Ashdown and Fariborz from MIT

Re: Fantasy Economies: How closely should we examine them? Actually it was the other way around: Gold is much more malleable than lead, so if the coin resisted being bent, then it was the fake.