eepjr24

5 minutes ago, HeroGM said:

Side effect of "summon coffee" or "summon cheap beer".

100L is a heck of a lot of summon cheap beer side effect .

- E

Another opinion question for how to do something. I am working on a spell for water mages to cause water to appear in a vessel that they have prepared for the purpose. Basically, after they dowse to find water, if it is within a certain range they can have it seep through the ground, porous rock, etc. and fill the container. 

Transform is a go to on things like this, so it could be used.

TK only versus water could work. This might be a broader spell eventually anyway.

Tunnelling, UAA, Invisible Power Effects could work, although that's more than a bit dodgy.

Teleport, see above for tunneling.

For transform, I am going to have to speculate a bit and assume that Steve was using Mass as his basis for Body Calculations in the materials list on 6e2, 171. A cubic meter of dirt is 10 Body, water is about 80% the density / mass of dirt, so a cubic meter of water is about 8 Body worth. A cubic meter of water is 1,000 liters or about 260 US Gallons. I am gonna go low and just shoot for 1 Body worth of liquid, giving up to 100 liters or 25 Gallons, depending on the size of the prepared container. I may have another version that does otherwise, but it's easy to compare that amount.

1d6 Minor Transform, unfilled prepared vessel to water filled prepared vessel. I am going with minor here because the water has to be actually present, it's not being created but essentially moved. If no local water was required, it would be a Major transform.

1d6 Minor Transform [5 CP]; OAF: Prepared vessel (inscribed with water sigils) of up to 100 liter capacity (-1), Standard Effect: 1 Body (-0), Water must be present within 32m (-.5), Water has same characteristics and quality of that locally present (-0), plus school specific limitations for -1.5. Probably would make it Gradual Effect (-.75) from 5er, I don't really like amount of discount Extra Time gives as it seems very all or nothing and this would truly be gradual. That gives us 1 RP, seems about right for the level of effect we are getting.

TK would be more like the mage manipulating the water over time to get it into the vessel. At 4 STR TK you could move 16 Liters 3m per phase. So 10 phases to move 16 L to the surface, 60 phases (6 minutes for SPD 2, 4 minutes for SPD 3) to move all 100L (if available). 

4 STR TK [6 CP];  Persistent (+.25); [7 AP] OAF: Prepared vessel (inscribed with water sigils) of up to 100 liter capacity (-1), Gradual Effect (-.75), Spell Lims (-1.5), Limited Range: 32m (-.25), Only versus Water (-1), Time Limit: 6 Minutes (-1). We end up at 1 RP again, but this time the caster is making an attack action every phase for several minutes. Not really what I was looking for but it could work for some situations. Maybe an apprentice or self taught version of the spell?

Tunneling has some interesting effects in that you could make spells that work easily versus sandy soil but not versus porous rock. Not really what I am looking for here, so I'll skip that one.

Teleport is going to get expensive pretty fast for such a minor effect, so I'll skip that one as well.

- E

47 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

The same way E assumes learning magic involves combat training (which, I confess, put some really amusing images in my head trying to combine "let's build a road through this swamp, but we'll need to add some combat practice" and "okay, these guys are here to fire cannon, whack you with sticks, push you around, and throw spears.  No matter how difficult that is, do _not_ let them get pregnant" from the other thread     .  Again, because it seems to be the only way people communicate anymore:  _not_ sarcasm.  I'm trying to share two brain pictures that gave me a good laugh),   

You know, it's interesting because I was actually thinking about this for my upcoming setting. Anyone who trains to be a mage with general offense and defense spells likely learned either at a place where they taught the basics of combat as well OR they have been in the world long enough acting like they know what they are doing to have learned in the school of hard knocks. If a player wanted to play otherwise I would certainly allow it and it might provide some amusing anecdotes. I'd actually encourage it, since this is would be strictly for roleplay reasons.

On the other hand, the village water mage (a different example of the "utility" mage) who is accustomed to finding new water sources, purifying water or maybe best case creating minor water constructs for labor purposes is NOT going to be ready to do these things in combat. If this comes up with a PC, I will apply the penalties until they either buy the skill or I judge them to have had enough trial by fire to make it needless (probably several months).

And the common person who might know a cantrip to tidy a room or light a fire, etc. is not going to have that type of skill and will likely not even remember that they have it as the frantically run from the scene. And that's even assuming there was some creative use they could find for the cantrip in combat.

I assume that mage training involves casting in combat situations. Concentration, Gestures and Incantations give other plenty of opportunity to interrupt if that is the desired effect.

- E

I am not affiliated with the poster, but saw them at:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RPGsalestrades/

Champions by hero games. Champions #01, Champions II #08, Champions III #15. Books are in very good condition. $35 plus $5.99 s&h. Shipping in u.s. lower 48 only. Paypal. Items will be shipped within 48 hours of paid invoice. Ty

So I am working on an encounter map and wanted to try out something for making settings with variable cover (trees, brush, etc.) easier to use. In the past a lot of questions about what sections of a tree provide cover or what kind of cover, have come up. See below for my WIP, this should illustrate what I am trying for. Thoughts and feedback appreciated.

Hrm. Going to have to post links, not enough room for the images to attach. You'll need to click in and zoom a couple times on the second image to see the tree trunks, this map will be split into 4 pieces for Roll20. The greenery remaining in the second image is smaller trees or brush that would still provide cover at ground level.

1 hour ago, steph said:

1- I know the rule of coordinating attacks to combine stun damage. You would let a player use multiple attack maneuver to create the same effect ? Combine the stun damage from is multiple attack ?

No. For the simple reason that there is no justification for doing so. Multiple attacks already has specific effects that are fairly complicated and trying to add in "coordinating with myself" just seems like something for nothing or a way to get around campaign maximums for AP. If a player wanted that effect I would just have them buy extra dice of the attack power with an additional RAR to represent the attack or coordination rolls. Then they have at least paid for the power.

1 hour ago, steph said:

2-  Did you use and track the endurance point in a heroic fantasy setting ?

Yes, I do. I also use LTE, but generally I track it rather than forcing the players to do so.

- E

20 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

Basically, it's just an Aid to multiple Characteristics and Powers all at once.

 

Longtime Hero Robert Michael Surbrook has a detailed writeup on his site.

 

http://www.devermore.com/surbrook/index/index.html

DBZ Page is: http://www.devermore.com/surbrook/worldbooks/dbzhero/dbzhero.html

34 minutes ago, Christougher said:

I've found that point savings of an EC were too much bang for the buck, and toyed with a few house rules from time to time.

This is really what I meant above when I said that players would have problems if you enforced the actual value of the limitation in points. There was generally no way to do this a little bit each adventure like there is with "not in magnetic fields" or "only in contact with ground", so when it happened it tended to take them out of play, which is really not fun for anyone, GM or player.

- E

54 minutes ago, Sicarius said:

Only reason I was reviewing this is I just got 6th ed and was trying to get why EC's were dropped.  To me it seemed like a good why to create sensible characters, (common power source), with an Achilles heel.  As long as the GM enforces that weakness and has villains capitalize on it often enough to be a PITA for the player.  I liked the 'tightness' of it.

IMO (and we won't ever know the why for sure, Steve does not comment on such things as a rule), it was too frequently ignored entirely or the player would either be bored to tears or throw a fit if something came up that kept them from using their EC. Unified Power to me was a reasonable compromise that meant if one gets drained they all get drained, which would be a more common appearance and is not all or nothing.

Edit: It is also not as prone to gaming the system with things like "Oh, my flames burn a material that my body excretes which produces it's own oxygen, so the Bat-Halon-arang does nothing to me" or similar nonsense.

References below, emphasis mine.

6e1, pg 70 

Quote

If a character buys a 2-point CSL with Strike, he must define the type of Strike — Punch, Sword Slash, or whatever. He cannot apply the Level to any type of Strike (but at the GM’s option, a character could buy 3-point CSLs that apply to all HTH Strikes, or all Ranged Strikes).

6e2, pg 80

Quote

This is the basic attack Maneuver. It includes attacks such as punches, kicks, elbow smashes, headbutts, attacks with weapons, firing a gun or a longbow, and just about any other way a character can hit another character. The basic OCV, DCV, and damage modifiers are +0, but the OCV modifier and the damage may vary by weapon type.

So what are things that are not a ranged strike? Anything HTH, obviously. Ranged Martial arts not based on Strike, likely. Ranged Maneuvers like Hip Shot, Ranged Disarm and Snap Shot, probably not?

Not sure about the effect of Set and Brace with this type of CSL.

I am guessing / hoping that it's limited to only damaging effects like KA, TK, Blast, Mental Blast? Or would it apply to all Attack Powers (6e1, 144)?

Then there is this to confuse things further for me:

6e2, 83

Quote

OTHER ATTACKS
Characters use this Maneuver when making any other attack not listed, including using Attack Powers such as Drain, Blast, Entangle, Flash, or other Powers that require an Attack Roll. To attack, the character should just make a normal Attack Roll, modified by any particular modifiers for the Power, Skill Levels used, or applicable Combat Modifiers.

They call out Blast here specifically.

Help?

I can give you the ones from the 6e FH (1200) if they are the same?

- E

1 minute ago, Tjack said:

   A law would be a good and righteous thing, but back in the Middle Ages it really only took the King or local lord saying “Do it.” and it got done.

  I’m just saying that we’re talking about three different things here.   First a set of laws that make sense to 20-21  century people.  Second, a discussion of the history of law during the Middle Ages. And third, an imagining of what legalities might exist in a Fantasy environment.

 This conversation keeps moving the goalposts.  Asking what the law would be if there were no PC’s there to enforce it is like asking who stopped the bandits from robbing the bank before John Wayne showed up.  The answer is...nobody. 
And if there are no PC’s to hear a tree fall in the forest does it really matter if it makes a sound?

I don't see the Middle Ages as a measuring stick, at least not in the original post. Others have applied that logic. Some fantasy is loosely (in many cases VERY loosely) based on the Middle Ages but adding magic and other fantasy elements makes it diverge pretty quickly.

And I completely disagree that there is no law without PC's. Let's take one of the larger fantasy RPG settings, Faerun. In Cormyr, the law is enforced by the Purple Dragons, an elite cavalry force backed up by a college of War Wizards. They handle routine and even very not routine problems on the daily, without PC's to intervene. That also goes to your third question, legalities in fantasy RPG's. 

I think I would be in the "punishment is too light" category. Simply as a deterrent I would think something more along the lines of:

Removal of titles

Branding or loss of a limb

Forfeiture of at least half of possessions

Optionally, just brand them and cast them out of the city

Anyone already branded for the crime the punishment might be something more along the lines of being sent to where things are summoned from.

- E

On 4/25/2020 at 12:00 PM, steriaca said:

Anyone have any suggestions for fictional gunslingers to add on my list?

Quigley from Quigley Down Under

Ethan Chandler from Penny Dreadful

Allan Quatermain from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Roland Deschain from Dark Tower

Roy Bean from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

Preacher from Pale Rider

Will Kane from High Noon

Should get you started.

10 hours ago, Spence said:

Well, I am going to be "that guy" and ask "why"?

Primarily because I want to know what amount of points a mid-level utility mage would need. I prefer to be at least close so figuring the points for 2-3 spells is all I need to do and then slap it on a template. If you read above you will see that these folks will be about 1 in 50 of the population in at least one of the starting countries, so to me that is significant enough to warrant it. To each their own, of course.

9 hours ago, archer said:

Competent professional magicians, on the other hand...

 

You might get your road fixed but certainly for more cost than ordering your peasants to do it.

If you have peasants, yes, that is exactly what happens. In one of the two starting countries that will be the way (well, generally slaves and indentured people, but close). In the more advanced country next door which is moving into more of a mercantile system, freemen are not as willing to jump when the local merchant magnate whistles and there is competition for labor. In those cases the higher wage of "utility" mage might well be exactly what you want to keep your best spice delivery road well maintained.

9 hours ago, archer said:

You might get ensorcelled into thinking your road is fixed when it wasn't. You might get robbed of everything you own and not even know how it happened. Your road might be fine for a week then the spell wears off after the magician leaves the area.

 

It can certainly be done by a variety of spells and quicker than peasants with shovels. But I wouldn't expect a lord to lay out the money unless he's needing to move his army from point A to point B quickly.

Earth mages have a pretty limited repertoire. And if they know enough spells to be able to hoodwink they are likely not for hire as road builders.

9 hours ago, archer said:

If you're going to have magically-improved roads, I'd suggest asking people here for several different write-ups using various powers. Then have the roadwork in-game be distinctive enough that even a layman could tell the difference between one magician's work and the next. It'd be a nice subtle way of marking boundaries between different nobles' territories.

 

And it'd give the nobles something to gossip about among themselves talking about the quality of the roadwork and getting recommendations on who to hire when the spellwork starts to get old and needs to be refreshed.

 

I'd imagine that magically-built roads could just as easily be magically un-built, which is something to keep in mind.

This idea I love. Competition for road work mages could be a prestige point among the merchant magnates. Favors of recommending someone to a particular earth mage. Mages consciously making their roads distinctive for the purpose of advertising.

And yes, war mages will certainly have that capability, it's unlikely most utility mages would spend the time to learn that type of thing unless they were in the employ of an army, which is also possible.

- E

35 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

<snip>

 

When you look at everything in the powers that you can buy-- many of which _can_ be constructed or interpreted so as to do things like build roads---  all the more expensive things you spend points on are based on either immediate impact on the game (skills that solve problems in a matter of Phases, for example) or combat (which is about as immediate as it gets) or defense (usually a part of combat).  Unless you see building a road as being an immediate shift in the balance of the moment, then I think Change Environment and its ability to remove penalties to movement is more than sufficient to build a road.

I don't have any disagreements with your reasoning. But Change Environment doesn't have anything to remove penalties (to movement or range modifiers, etc.). Technically, it can be used to remove penalties to harsh climates indirectly by controlling the temperature. The way I was thinking of using it was either with TK or 1 point of damage, either would not be very efficient and just seemed clunky. I am guessing you maybe have a house rule that you have used for so long that you think of it as being a rule that allows CE to remove penalties?

If I wanted to go that route... I guess you could buy Environmental Movement? But you'd have to figure what penalties rough terrain provides at the phase movement level, since I don't think that's anywhere in the Hero standard repertoire, unless you count the FH Unit Battle Terrain chart on FH 228 or the hourly movement rates on FH 388. Steve even says as much "the HERO System movement rules are designed for combat and crisis conditions, not long-distance travel." (FH, 386). 

- E

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Given that you specify what an END reserve can charge when each power is built I am having a hard time thinking of a way that it would actually be used.

That's true for powers that players have. But for things like gadgets that are bought with $ not points...

Quote

A character with an Endurance Reserve must decide which powers draw energy from the Reserve, and which draw energy from his personal END. A power can normally only draw energy from one or the other — it can’t switch from one energy source to another unless it has the appropriate Advantage (see below). Characters can Push powers that get their END from an Endurance Reserve.

So Player1 has an off the shelf Blaster. It is powered only by END Reserves. It takes Type A Fusion batteries or Type B Fission batteries. Those batteries could take a Restricted Use limitation if the GM felt it was warranted. Generally, I would only see that happening if say Hydrogen generating batteries were the most common by far and powered most things. 

Niche case? Sure. There are things in Hero that only apply to a specific genre or even sub-genre generally. I guess I get a little perplexed by why this comes up as a problem. Unless it seems broken or mis-cost it can just be ignored. There is even a specific example in there similar to what I posted that explains when it would likely be used.

- E

Staying away from the current tangent on skills, that's a dead horse we have beaten many a time. 😃

Personally on the subject of power gaming (I think it's the same as what used to be called min-maxing?) it is the same as most things. Some of it makes sense, some of it goes too far and some characters could use a bit more application of it. Which are which, like the skills argument, is entirely dependent on the particular GM.

- E

A past his prime warrior with a bit extra around the middle who still enjoys a bout now and then and is always up for training the recruits.

- E

1 hour ago, Urlord said:

To me, using spells to do things like building or repairing roads doesn’t fall into the category of low magic. But, that’s just me. 
As for your spells, if I had to choose one, I would go with the 15 AP Transform. It seems more like what you are trying to accomplish. Using TK or Tunneling seems a bit odd. 

Perhaps low level is not what I should have said. The ability to use magic is commonplace (for me that means that it is likely at least one person in a 4 person family will have the ability to use some magic), but having the aptitude, discipline, etc. to excel is much less common. Take those things plus some luck, years of practice and you can become a powerful mage. Get a decade or two in and you can craft your own spells, etc. So that works out to something like 1 in 4 have a cantrip or two to make their families life easier. 1 in 50 can make a living doing nothing aside from their magic (likely still to make mundane tasks go faster). 1 in 10,000 could become a war mage, adventurer, court mage, etc. Those figures assume you have someone to teach you or you have access to assistive devices like tomes and spell books. World population at this point is in the 300-500 million range. So probably looking at something like 15-20,000 reasonably powerful mages in the world (some places are not as advanced or have restrictions, etc.). 

43 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Transform: ground into road, OAF (material components: wood and brick)

Chris (and Tom), this would be for truly simple roads, using whatever rock was in the ground and simply smoothing out a path for carts, horses and people. Or simply to use as a preparation for the spell that would lay brick, gravel or cobbles or maybe even just in prep for the manual labor since leveling is very time consuming.  

An advanced earth mage (see above) might cut a stone path from the side of a mountain to provide access to his keep.

- E

So I am into considerations of prevalent low level magic in the new setting I am working on. There are lots of restrictions on magic as far as keeping it from being overwhelming in combat, but even low level magic can have lots of side effects in the economy and other areas like infrastructure. So in this setting I am working to figure out the best way to create earth based spells for repairing or creating roads.

First thoughts:

Change Environment with long lasting, either as damage to the high spots or as TK or both (seems... too much change for CE?)

Transform (rough road to smooth)

Telekinesis

Tunnelling? (Seems wonky) 

At the moment I am leaning toward TK. 18 STR would give you enough to completely lift 10 inches (.25m) of mixed soil in a hex area. That seems a bit high, but maybe? Thinking 13 STR TK would give enough to move around a 5 inches of soil (which would fix up to 10" of variations if roughly evenly distributed). 

13 STR TK (21 CP); AoE: Line - 16Lx2Hx4W (+1/2) (31 AP); Limited Target, Set Effect, Various Limitations for spells as appropriate.

Dirt has about 10 body per cubic hex, so if we conjecture that fixing the top .25m as above is sufficient, that's 3 Body per hex. Stone is about twice that for 5 body per hex area at .25m deep. As Transform it would be something like:

2d6 Minor Transform, standard effect: 6 Body (10 CP); AoE: Line - 16Lx2Hx4W (+1/2) (15 AP); Limited Target, Various Limitations for spells as appropriate.

I am on the fence because both seem reasonable and valid, but one is 2 times more AP. Any opinions out there one way or the other?

- E

It's developed by Seven Networks. From their XDA forum:

Quote

"How Do You Make Money?"
The truth is, we don't right now. What we are doing is creating a source of analytics from our users in order to fix bugs and improve the app. This includes your device, android version, battery life, and app usage. You are assigned a UUID that completely separates you from your device and data, and there is no feasible way for us to personally identify you. If you'd like, uninstalling and reinstalling the app will give you a completely new UUID that cannot be connected to the previous one. We only use this to rapidly analyze and change our product.

In the future we may sell anonymized data to carriers, but that's one idea of many. That's part of what we want to know from you. This is a unique business plan for the ad blocking market. Would you be more inclined toward an acceptable ads or freemium model (premium being opting out of analytics)? Our main priority is to provide a high quality experience based on user suggestions to YOU at a high development pace. After a post we made on reddit got a bit of traction, we added a log, selectable app filter, and on/off switch based off of suggestions within the next few days. We want to get that type of feedback, that help, from XDA, and we're excited about the DEVDB platform. We've included the feature request and bug report sections and we hope that they are used! Either way, we're excited to have address these things with you in the comments.

They are profitable without this product so my suspicion is that they will charge (for some meaning of the word) for it once they figure out the best way to monetize it.

If you read through their thread history you will see that they have had outages and the like from a week to a couple months at various times as the team got called to work on their actual profitable applications. Just a suspicion again, but I suspect this is a love project by the dev team that they are hopefully will pay off for them at some point.

- E

On 12/10/2020 at 1:11 PM, JmOz said:

My issue with that is if you are not paying points for it does it really need a limitation value...

LoneWolf pointed out one reason. Another for me is that when you create something for use an item that no points are paid for sometimes players want to build a custom one and pay points for it so they don't lose it frequently or the like. 

And I think it works perfectly for the literal battery sense of the End Reserve, where Electrical Power Pack A powers devices that take A slots, Electrical Power Pack B powers devices that take B slots and Power Pack C is really supplying hydrogen for combusting in devices that use it. Maybe there are devices that can use A or B but not C, maybe there are devices that take one of each of those for a single use.

- E 

I think the above covers it pretty well. Do remember that some people even in brutally hard games like hockey (Mark Messier, etc.) play for more than 20 years and you are going to have some heroes who are more detective types or long distance combatants or support who could have careers in the 40-50 year range. On the flip side, there are tragic accidents that take down people in their early years or even the first foray. The line will likely have a few people who sat out the hero game altogether for a variety of reasons. And you might even get a generation or two that the genes skip altogether. Maybe they still went into the family trade, maybe not. 

- E