Greatwyrm

Re: Mystic "The's"

Oh' date=' we also came up with the name "The Fool," but we couldn't find a purpose or power for the name. Any suggestions?[/quote']

 

The Fool could be tasked with toppling powerful figures who let their pride get out of control. His powers could be limited mind control abilities that make the target agreeable to more and more outlandish ideas by making them think they were their own ideas. Of course, since they're go great, it must be a good idea. Eventually they have an Emperor's New Clothes situation to get their ego back in check.

Re: Romantic Fantasy

Well' date=' I was just wondering. I heard about a game call Blue Rose and didn't know what "romantic fantasy rpg" meant. And the authors don't ring a bell, except Mercedes Lackey.[/quote']

 

Hate to come here and send you to another company's site, but try greenronin.com or blueroserpg.com. It's made by the same people who do Mutants & Masterminds. They give you a pretty good rundown of what to expect.

Re: What's the best way to learn Hero?

The only piece of advice I can give you is to remember that it's not nearly as hard as it looks. I think I'm kind of a weird HERO convert. Fuzion got me interested and there are no other HERO players in my area. Basically, it was just me, FrED, and the message boards. If that's all you've got, it will all "click" for you sooner or later, but it may take some time. It did for me.

Re: [Waiwode's World] Cave & Forest Skraelings

Penalty to running because they're 3 to 4 feet high! I tried to be logical about it' date=' and follow the examples llaid out in FH.[/quote']

 

I don't think the running penalty is inappropriate. I just found it strange that "slow" (for lack of a better term) creatures use hit-and-run tactics, which usually require having greater mobility than your targets. Ambush seems like it would fit them well, but I just have trouble seeing them in a protracted hit-and-run scenario.

 

For the forest ones, maybe climbing or swinging would be a good choice. The ability to move quickly through the trees would provide a big advantage on their home terrain. You could build such abilities similarly to super-skills found in Dark Champions.

 

As for the cave guys, burrowing might be appropriate. You might also consider making them master trappers and giving them bonuses to find and avoid traps.

 

Just some thoughts.

Re: [Waiwode's World] Cave & Forest Skraelings

It seems odd that a race with a penalty to running favors hit-and-run tactics, but that's just me. Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with these, assuming your math is good.

Re: I Need Opinions on published supplements.

Ulitmate Martial Artist should be very useful, regardless of the genre you're playing. Grab a copy if you can. You won't be disappointed.

If you're looking to branch out from supers, try Fantasy HERO. It makes the short-list of best books I own.

Re: What is it about Champions?

I started seriously looking into HERO just before D&D3.5 came out. I figured if they were just going to screw up D&D and make many of my supplements useless, I was done with it. Thankfully, the changes were mostly good, but I still got more interested in HERO.

I think most of the complaints people have are either about earlier editions or just bad GMs. In my own circle of friends, many of the things they were hesitant about just weren't in 5e.

Unfortuantely, I have yet to run or play-in a HERO game. If my current D&D game dies (which is a serious possibility over the next few months) there are a number I'd like to try in HERO.

Re: Skill & Talent: Lore & Mastery

But with Normal Human Maxima in play not many are going to be willing to run their EGO up to 23 for five ranks of Mastery. Total cp spent= 57. For 25 points of spells and 15 points of tight group levels. (Oh' date=' and an unholy ECV).[/quote']

 

You should always expect players to do exactly what you think no one would. If you have some kind of mentalist college of spells, you should watch out for someone doing exactly what you spelled out here. A massive ECV and +5 to learn and use spells is awfully tempting when you can blow 25 RP on a spell.

 

That being said' date=' you are correct. I think cost reduction works better. Just not for me! [/quote']

 

Just my $0.02. What's fun for your game is what counts.

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

I would really imagine that in a good fantasy world the human smiths would make very few weapons and almost no armor' date=' and those that they did make would be considered inferior.[/quote']

 

They might be inferior, but there's plenty of good reasons for them to keep making them.

 

First, in many "traditional" fantasy games, there just aren't as many dwarves as humans. That would probably lead to fewer dwarven smiths and ultimately less production capacity. That would give you very low supply and very high prices -- probably more than the typical weapon purchaser (soldier or beginning adventurer) could afford.

 

Second, everyone would want to maintain some weapon production, just in case they lost their supplier. If they were destroyed, blackmailed into not trading with you, or even worse -- went to war with you, you'd be in serious trouble if you couldn't pick up the slack in a hurry. You never want to be totally dependant on an outside source for a defense item.

 

Finally, if dwarves have a monopoly (or near monopoly) on weapon production, that almost automatically leads to artificial price manipulation. A longsword now costs a year's wages. Why? Cause we said so.

Re: Alternatives to the Speed Chart from DH

Thanks everyone. I'm thinking this may be a little tougher than I'd like for a bunch of new players, myself included. If I come up with any more brilliant ideas, I'll let you know.

Re: Skill & Talent: Lore & Mastery

I like what you've got here. One question, though. What would you think about letting mastery give you a 1 reduction in real cost per level, with a minimum cost of 1 on future spells. That way it could still give the roll bonuses, but function more like Linguist or Well Connected for purchasing new spells.

The reason I suggest this is, it doesn't really look like you're actually paying anything for the ability. There's no reason not to take all the mastery you can as soon as possible. To paraphrase a D&D guideline, if you make a power that you can't see someone passing up, it's probably too powerful. If you make it a reduction in cost, instead of a credit on points, I think it might work a bit better.

Re: Why would Dwarves Trade with Humans

Keep in mind that trade isn't always for something you can't make yourself. Many times, it's because your trading partner can make it cheaper or better. For example, the US can make cars, but other countries tend to be able to do it for less.

Think of a couple of things dwarves could make, but might not want to do themselves. Maybe they use most of their metals for mining machinery, weapons, and armor. It may not be worth their time to make nails, chain, or table utensils if the humans next door crank them out for next to nothing. Maybe it's easier to buy and slaughter livestock than it is to try to raise your own in a confined area (like a mountain citadel).

Another option is to make the humans middle-men for some other culture's product. It's just more convenient for the dwarves to get something they want from their human neighbors than to send their own merchants to the far side of the human territory to trade on their own.

Re: San'Dora Map Is Up

I'm taken back in two ways, although I shouldn't be.

First, both maps are excellent. Having seen some of KC's other work, this shouldn't surprise me.

Second, there's a lot of stuff on that map. Having seen KS's character building website, that shouldn't surprise me either.

In an issue of Digital HERO that I just got, they describe several alternate methods of resolving initiative and the speed chart. One that I really liked was the countdown method.

In short, you roll a number of dice equal to your SPD. The GM counts down from the highest number. When your's comes up, you get to go. Then, you subtract some number (probably 3 or 4), and that's when you get to go again.

Overall, I really like this. My big question is, how would I resolve things that specifically require counting segments (like Flash powers)? My first thought was to just count the normal damage on the Flash dice and you be blinded or whatever for that many actions. However, that means that characters with higher speed will shake it off sooner. That just doesn't really make sense for me. Maybe I could just make Flash affect you for the number of initative counts you rolled for effect, even if that bleeds over into the next round.

Please go easy on the semi-newbie. Other than that, your opinions are appreciated.

Re: TSR Alternity

Actually, a great deal of the Star*Drive and Dark*Matter creatures have appeared in d20Modern supplements or Dragon or Dungeon. If you're doing d20M, all you really need the old books for is background info and such, but that was the best part of Dark*Matter.

As for mucking things up, converting Alternity to d20M is very simple. As I said earlier, the whole d20 system owes a lot to Alternity.

Re: TSR Alternity

Where are you at, Savinien? I live in Princeville, but work in Peoria.

Re: TSR Alternity

There were two main settings produced for the Alternity system - Star*Drive and Dark*Matter (they must have gotten a good deal on *s or something). Both were very good, but Dark*Matter was my favorite. I believe it was the best book, in both physical quality and writing, that TSR ever produced. Think X-files with a tiny bit of magic thrown in. If you can find a copy in good shape on ebay, by all means pick it up. Otherwise, you should be able to find all the old Alternity stuff in .pdf at rpgnow.com.

As far as the mechanics, I can't say I agree with John. Alternity was certainly a departure from D&D, even though it did have classes (very loose classes). I think it's much easier to see how Alternity laid the groundwork for a lot of things in the d20 system than to see it's heritage in D&D.

Re: AOE 1 hex Accurate. HELP!!!

What SFX would call for it?

heat seeking missile

a very accurate magic sword

a trap set to swing/shoot at a specific spot

Re: National Warrior Archetypes

How about the native American warrior?

Re: Pulp Hero love...Sky Capt is a good sign.

Pulp Hero is probably the book I'm looking forward to the most now that I have Fantasy Hero. I won't get here soon enough for me.

Re: Cinematic Gun Combat: "Give me that."

I think putting an Activation Roll on the construct would be good' date=' too (reflecting the difficulty in catching the captured weapon "just right" to allow for an immediate attack).[/quote']

 

Good call. Maybe tack on Side Effects so if you fail, you've actually ended up shooting yourself. Not like this should be an easy thing to do, even in a cinematic campaign.

Re: Cinematic Gun Combat: "Give me that."

If you want to use it right away, you might be able to build a RKA with Trigger. The trigger being "upon taking a gun from an enemy."

Re: End Reserve and alternate REC for it

Oh, I didn't take the D&D thing as a negative. Like you said, Doc, I just hadn't looked at it that way.

As far as the boards themselves, I probably wouldn't have gotten into HERO without them. As a newbie, sometimes it's a little frustrating that I can't see such simple solutions to some builds. At the same time, it's nice that you can usually get one or two much more elegant and durable ways to do stuff just by asking.

Re: End Reserve and alternate REC for it

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I see the point about the D&D fire-and-fill mentality, but I was trying to make something where wizards would hesitate blowing all the END RES. Mainly because it would take them a day or two to fill back up, not just a night's sleep.

I think I'll probably go with something very similar to what OddHat and Nevenall suggested. Funny, isn't it, how you can find ways to do stuff if you just read the rules? I gotta try it more often I guess.

So, I'm working on a FH magic system. What I want to do is have spellcasting powered by an End Reserve. Instead of buying REC for the reserve, I want to use a Meditation skill or something like that. With a base time of one hour, you can make a Meditaion roll and recover an amount of END for the reserve equal to how much you make the roll by. You can also take more or less time and apply the appropriate modifier for moving up or down the time chart.

I know this won't get END back very fast and that's what I'm going for. I want characters to be able to store magic power, but with the knowledge they'll have to spend it wisely, since it takes a while to get it back.

Here are my questions:

1. Is there any rules reason I shouldn't do it this way? Is there some munchkiny way to break this that I'm missing?

2. I was thinking this wouldn't be worth a limitation on the END Reserve, since it's basically a campaign ground rule. Opinions?