Greatwyrm

I'd say you'd at least want 20 or so spells in each group. If you only had to buy another power skill, that would be one thing. But if you're paying for an additional END reserve and the real costs of the spells, that's going to get expensive in a hurry. I wouldn't look at too many people branching out of their primary specialty. Even if they did, I'd have to believe it wouldn't be for anything but some lower level utility spells that their chosen field just doesn't provide.

As mentioned above, how you set up your magic system will decide a lot of this. However, here are some things I've seen in other games that may help you out. In 2eAD&D, the Complete Wizard's Handbook suggested something along the lines of no less than one spell per level. Usually, lower levels (1-3) had at least two or three spells. Mid levels (4-6) usually had one or two. High levels (7-9) had at least one. This allowed for something mages could get in their specific school when they levelled, but still allowed plenty of room for new spell research. If you're talking about a new field of magical research, think about those guidelines. In Talislanta, 4e if I remember correctly, they figure there are really only 12 or so magicall effects and all spells are just variations on those. Bolt attacks, shields, divinations, summons, and some more I can't remember. This isn't all that different from the D&D spell schools. However, you could say that there are only so many things people have figured out how to do with magic and all known spells are just variations on those X number of effects. Finally, Rolemaster had pretty specialized spell lists for just about any field of magic you can think of. I believe there were 20 or 30 spells in each one. Of course, they also had about 300 spell lists. I doubt you feel like making 9000 spells up ahead of time. The point is, if you want to make a system where characters have access to a varying number of specialized fields, you'll probably want to put more spells in them to balance the specialized nature of the effects. Just my $0.02 (USD). Exact change only, please.

Have you hit up all the regular spots? comic shops game stores local colleges (junior or otherwise) libraries renaissance fairs book stores (Waldenbooks, Borders, etc.)

Keep in mind, in addition to smelling bad, a skunk's spray can temporarily blind an attacker. You may want to think about a sight flash with that.

I have bought one copy, but not two. Buying one is loyalty. Two borders on capitalism.

I ran a D&D game a few years ago, in which, the party always managed to get themselves in more trouble than they could handle. After one particularly bad episode near the end of the 2+ year campaign, the player of the Barbarian had a sudden flash of insight. Just as it was about to hit the fan again, he said, "I've finally figured it out. We're cursed so that we can't learn."

Dang that was fast! Looks pretty good, too. Hmmm... I wonder... I hear earlier versions of FH included large amounts of US currency and the phone numbers of several beautiful women in my area. Any chance we'll be able to get those on the genre page?

I hear earlier versions of FH had a worksheet for creating magic systems. Is there any chance we'll see one of those on the genre page?

Do you allow magic-using characters to buy CSLs to help with stuff like spell attack rolls?

Just wanted to be sure I knew what you were going for before I made myself look too stupid. Anyway, for dramatic purposes, you may want to make the damage from the attack a gradual effect if you go with regeneration for the healing. You could describe it as the target of the attack being able to feel their spirit being ripped little by little from their body as it feeds the regen. It seems a little weird that the target takes the damage all at once, but the beneficiary heals slowly. Just a thought.

I'm not trying to be dense here, but could you give me an idea (without mechanics) of what the spell is supposed to do? It looks like you're trying to use an attack to suck the life force from one creature to power healing in another creature. Is that close?

Well, I could go home and rip those pages out of my copy, but that would be kind of counter productive. The thing is, I've got the new version of FH, but I can't find that stuff in there. I hope I'm just missing it. Otherwise, I can just improvise from the SH chart.

I'm trying to come up with some guidelines for magic item pricing and I'm using the basic weapons and armor as a baseline. However, I can't seem to find a relationship between Active/Real points and the money costs. Sure, better stuff costs more. But is there a foundational relationship like the guidelines for new gear in Star Hero?

I picked up mine from my friend last night. It's no book -- it's a space station!

I won't be able to make GenCon this year, but a friend has promised to pick me up a copy. Given that, how many will you be selling at GenCon? Am I going to tell him your booth needs to be his first stop?

Okay, now I see what the fuss is about. Thanks, LL.

Can someone explain to the new guy (me) why VPPs are good for gadget-type characters (e.g. Batman, James Bond) but not for fantasy spellcasters? I mean, aren't potions, scrolls, and wands just magical gadgets? I'd say VPPs would be ideal for an artificer type character. A mage who gets most or all of his power from making potions, talismans, and such. OTOH, I think if you wanted to go along a similar route to D&D, using craft skills and cash would be a good way to go. Just make separate craft skills for each type of magic item. Maybe you're good with potions, but never learned how to make wands. Like most things in HERO, it just depends on the type of game you want, right?

I thought I'd chip in with some insight from someone very new to HERO and a d20 die-hard. First, all those examples are not padding. I'm sure some of you who have been with HERO since the beginning look right past them. For me, if the big black book hadn't had them, I never would have bought it. It's just that simple. It would have been like trying to learn a foreign language without those little tapes that let you hear what the phrase is really supposed to sound like. Sure, you can do it, but it's a lot easier with the tape. Next, the size of the book, quality of the art, and level of crunchiness will not matter to the typical d20 gamer. For the most part, people play D&D/d20 because its 1) simple and 2) familiar. For most of those people, HERO appears to be neither. (Please note, I said "appears".) d20 is geared for people who like "plug and play" games. HERO appears to be more of a game for people who like to open the case and play with jumpers, at least as far as GMs go. I really first became interested in HERO when I first heard about the 3.5 revision. I'm very happy with what I've found. I'm developing a new campaign for my group to begin playing in early next year. While it looks like most of the group is happy with the revision so far, I'm keeping the setting open mechanically so I can make the switch to HERO if we want to. It's basically going to be big changes like this or people just looking for a less cookie-cutter feel to their game that will bring people to HERO. For example, the friendly competition ads with Champions and Silver Age Sentinels. I remember one where the Chamions guy says something like "and your powers work every time, just the way you want them to." That kind of customization, coupled with the fact that your abilities are limited only by your creativity and point budget, are the sorts of things that need to be brought to the front if you're trying to go after most d20 gamers. Well, that and the fact the system isn't really that hard. Most of the resistance I've met with HERO is from people who remember people playing (what I assume were) previous editions, rolling carloads of dice to see if they could cross the street, and tracking the thousandths of each character point.

I've been off the boards for a while, but here's something I'd like to see as a complete Hero newbie. In D&D3, one of the things I liked as a DM was the Challange Rating system. It's by no means perfect, but it gives a reasonably good guide as to what level of characters can handle the creature. I'd like to see some kind of guidelines like this. How dangerous is it for two 75+75 characters to take on 6 20pt skeletons? I honestly have no idea. Heck, I'm just now finally figuring out how to build spells and stuff.

Re: Re: Re: Conversions Again, making money is not the issue. If you're good enough to reprint the entire SRD and make people pay for what they can get for free on the 'net, you're welcome to do so. The thing is, anything derived from SRD content or other open gaming content from the 3rd party publishers has to be open content too. The companies I've seen that do stats for their own system and d20 versions. Usually, they end up putting the open game content in an appendix or sidebar, to keep it totally separate from their original system. The reason for this is it has to be clearly identifiable as OGC and they don't want to open the door on their proprietary system. The way the Open Gaming License is set up, open content breeds more open content. If you start with open content, from any source, what you finish with is open too.

Re: Conversions Nothing forbids conversions to other systems. However, there are a few fine points to keep in mind. 1. The d20 license and the Open Gaming License aren't the same thing. The d20 license gives you permission to use the d20 logo. The OGL gives you permission to create Open Game Content (OGC). 2. Don't worry about the d20 License. You're not making a d20 supplement, you're making a HERO supplement. The d20 license is the one that forbids character generation and experience rules. Thus, neither will be a problem for you. 3. The OGL not only gives you the right to make new OGC, but requires anything you make to be open content as well. This is where it starts getting really sticky for you. By throwing HERO rules into an OGC document, you are likely opening them as open game content, for anyone to re-use. Of course, you wouldn't be opening up much, but I doubt Mr. Long would appreciate you creating a headache on this scale for his company. There's probably a good way to do a solid conversion from d20 to HERO, but definitely check with the parent companies before you do so. By the way, making money has no bearing on whether or not someone can sue you for more that you're worth. Just ask the guys from Napster.

Re: Re: Re: Common complaints To be honest, this is one of the aspects that kept me from getting into the HERO system for quite a while. Now, I'm a long-time D&D player. I'm used to having tons of stuff ready-made and ready to go out of the box. Maybe I'm lazy. Whatever. But it was nice to be able to take a stock item (class/monster/spell), make some minor modifications, and get pretty much whatever I needed as a DM. The more template based approach in 3e made that even easier. However, when the 3.5 news came out, I was not a happy camper. I'm still reserving judgment on the quality of the revision until I see it. The thing is, I have a very large collection of 3rd party material. I figured if I'm going to have to spend a great deal of time updating that to 3.5, I might as well update it to a system that has a little more "stability in the operating system" for lack of a better analogy. This brought me to GURPS, HERO, and Fuzion (yes, Fuzion). The somewhat thin support of Fuzion ruled it out pretty quickly. I like GURPS, but it just isn't cinematic enough in the basic rules. Plus, there is a good chance of a GURPS 4e in the next couple of years, leaving me with the same problem as 3e D&D vs. 3.5e D&D. So, I read up on the sample pdfs available on the company website. All of them. Several times. I've come to the conclusion this is probably the system I'm after. I guess what I'm trying to say, in far too many words, is that building everything from the ground up is a real barrier to entry for some people. It was the main one for me, until I was faced with doing it anyway for the system I was currently using. More books like the Fantasy Grimoire and the premade superpowers book I saw mentioned elsewhere could really go a long way to removing that barrier.

You may want to check with whoever is in charge of licensing with HERO Games. By converting all of that to HERO, you may end up with someone trying to claim all of the HERO rules as OGC. They'd be wrong, but it would still be worth checking before you run the risk of opening them or yourself up to such an attack. Again, I realize that would be a stupid assumption to make. To me, that makes it all the more likely someone will try it.