Mordax

Re: How do you put someone to sleep? I would probably shy away from that, since Entangle already has an established method of blocking access to senses that gets really, really expensive. Here's another one, though: Rather than Mind Control, what about Mental Illusions with Mandatory Effect: EGO+30? Once you hit that level, the person's completely out of touch with reality, has vivid dreamlike experiences, remains still, can be slapped out of it, etc.

Re: Alignments Yeah. The fantasy genre often explores moral dilemmas in literature - it's nice to be able to keep that in game, too. That's why I'm doing it the way I am now - a person's feelings and what the gods require don't always match, but it's a player's choice whether or not this has an in-game impact. Don't call on, poke or otherwise deal with godlike powers, and they don't even notice you.

Re: How do you put someone to sleep? Hmm... Well, the Extra Time is a wash, of course. As for the rest: On the one hand, the Bulky, Fragile Focus (TV) is worth a higher Limitation than Incantations (Complex, Nerdy). But on the other, an attacker would probably need to buy an Entangle or Cover someone with an RKA to make them sit still long enough for it to work. No, the point savings probably go to Killer Shrike, this round.

Re: Alignments The best thing to do for this kind of thing is, like a lot of people have mentioned, think about it in the context of your own world rather than attempting a universal port of D&D to HERO. What does 'good' or 'evil' mean? Forgetting about Elric and LOTR and especially WotC, and just worrying about your specific campaign world. Some options include: Good and evil involve karmic energy of some kind. There's some sort of actual, detectable energy involved in a person's thoughts and/or deeds. This is the D&D answer, or even more famously, the Star Wars one: doing 'morality-related' acts rubs off on the person doing them, for good or ill. Changing your actions switches the charge around, but the more you've swung one way or the other, the harder it is to get back. You know, build up enough eviltrons (or body thetans ) in your aura, and, well, you're doomed. There's nothing wrong with this, if you give it more thought than D&D did. At the very least, have some hard and fast answers about what happens when someone kills a kobold child. In this kind of universe, that question is not subjective: alignment is as quantifiable as motion or heat, and can have grave consequences for players, so it's important to be consistent in application. (I'd probably want to score this with points, personally. Like Neverwinter Nights or something. More slide toward an alignment, the likelier a person would get restrictive Psych Lims toward a given behavior because they have 'goodness' or 'evilness' cancer. I would also probably limit this to one axis to avoid it becoming crazy complicated.) 'Good' and 'evil' are about cosmic entities keeping score. Basically, it's all about Santa's naughty list: people who do good are rewarded, people who do bad are punished. I use this one for my current campaign, as described earlier in the thread. Morality of this type should be tied to a code or philosophy. It's not 'objective absolute good,' it's 'some powerful entity's idea of good.' It should push a particular agenda, or maybe more than one for more complex systems. Whether or not it's detectable depends on the sort of power that does the deciding, and how they like to handle it: judgment that won't happen until the afterlife is probably not detectable with a simple spell, turning someone into a spider for bragging...probably is. It also matters if the god(s) can tell what a person's thinking, if they're capricious or fallible. A world run by the medieval Christian god is different than something run by the Greek pantheon, and so on. Lots of room to play with this notion. 'Good' and 'evil' are just words. The default answer for a gritty campaign - nobody's watching, or if they are, all they're holding in their mighty hands is popcorn. Just let people take their Psych or Social Lims, depending on if they're sincere or just faking it well. In any case, the important thing is to understand what you mean by good and evil well enough that you could clearly articulate it to a player if they asked, and to consistently enforce it even when they don't. If you can't do that, you can't exactly model it with points. (That's my big problem with D&D: there's enough discussion that it seems like everybody should be able to agree what "Chaotic Evil" means, but in practice, it's just too fuzzy, and people end up shouting at each other. Also, the same nine pigeonhole system is supposed to cover all campaigns ever, when it's only really applicable to some.)

Re: How do you put someone to sleep? I've generally used an END or END+STUN Drain for that sort of effect, because I liked the ability to tailor the duration of a given effect - plus, it wears off gradually. Seemed to me that the trouble with a STUN Only EB is that you either have to drop someone deep into the negatives, or they'd just take a few recoveries and be fine. The Mind Control thing's really clever, though. While it's true people can't necessarily fall asleep on demand, Mind Control can make a person do other stuff they couldn't normally choose to do, (like, I'd argue that people can't generally choose who they fall in love with, but Mind Control can force that issue). It's tempting to use them in combination for knockout drugs: someone short on END would be likelier to want to sleep, and it would represent a chemical haze even if they make the Breakout roll.

Re: Alignments Thanks. I agree about that being the issue with D&D alignments: all this time, and even the core rulebooks are obviously confused about what they mean. If the authors don't even know, I'm not sure what the rest of us are supposed to do with it.

Re: Alignments My present campaign has ended up with alignments of a sort, and I'm pretty happy with them despite loathing D&D's system since the olden days. Relatively benign powers require that their priests follow certain rules. The priests don't have to believe in these rules, actions are what count. This is bought as a Social Lim / Distinctive Features at the low end because if someone knows a person is a priest, they have some idea of how that person must behave to get at their powers. If a person has a 'minor' fall from grace, they can get back in with the offended god by simple ritual purification. (Actual crimes take more, if atonement is possible at all.) This doesn't detect magically because it's not really about a magical quality that resides in the person. It also has nothing to do with an 'absolute good' - it's just their god keeping an eye on someone who is wearing their company uniform, and is supposed to be actively supporting their agenda. Several 'good' gods disagree about what's appropriate behavior, and it's possible to fall out of favor with one and keep the others. (The god of healing, for instance, doesn't allow killing even in self defense. The sun god is fine with killing in self defense, and encourages proactively killing where demon cultists are involved.) The party's NPC priestess sincerely agrees with the precepts of the healing goddess, (no violence, heal the sick), and grudgingly abides by the precepts of the wind goddess, (no booze or other fun), purely to get the magic. She loses the wind goddess' favor during virtually every trip back to town, and has to do a brief ritual cleansing before each trip out. 'Hostile' powers like demons actually do have a magically detectable effect on those who call on them: they deal BOECV Transform damage to their human 'allies,' to represent them eating souls one virtue at a time. For instance, a sample sword empowered by a demon of wrath devours a wielder's mercy, leaving them with a permanent Berserk disadvantage over time. As soon as someone starts down that road, paladin smites hit them as though they had horns, and it's hard to shake it off. People who don't call on divine powers can behave in any way they choose: they're not representing the gods, so they're not judged as anything but 'human' until the next life. Anyway, seems to be working.

Re: Setting a real point limit, instead of AP limit I can understand your desire to allow casters more powerful effects under limited circumstances. Don't put much stock in the RC cap thing as a replacement for AP, though: seems to me that it's just as much eyeballing either way. I'm handling this with a few different things, IMC: The AP cap on special abilities is really more of a Normal Characteristics Maxima: it can be exceeded, it just costs. Nobody's bitten there, but it leaves the door open if anybody really needs it. (Just as well. My experience with overspecialized characters mirrors PhilFleischmann's: they usually die long before the well rounded guys, not after.) Casters can buy magical items that amplify the effects of spells. After all, a strong warrior can do some normal damage with their fist, and boost it with Maneuvers or CSLs...or just break down and buy a weapon if they want the advantage of Ranged, or Killing or whatever. A mage is the same way: their spells can do a certain amount of harm 'unarmed,' or they can use a tool to extend their natural capabilities. Ritual magic with a vastly inflated AP cap is available to explain certain wondrous things in the world...but it always requires a large number of participants, not just extra time or money. That way, there's always an RP limitation built into whether or not someone can do really earthshaking stuff: the best spells require a social consensus, and all the baggage that implies.

Re: Sharing my notes Re: magic system - Thanks for the kind words. I'm mostly handling balance by feel at this point, so I'm glad to have a second opinion. I'll be adding the final two schools of magic soon: - Chaos Magic, which will just be an adjunct to a caster's existing system. (I think it'll offer an improved version of Mana Tap to mana casters, and maybe a naked improved Delayed Effect cap to spirit casters, either with an automatic Side Effect to transform the caster into something truly horrible.) - Light Magic, which will use both mana and spirit based casting, each depending on the role. Paladins will use spirit casting to call on 'the blessings of angels,' which neatly covers both why paladins can fall, and why falling imbues them with more power than other people, since spirit casting easily flips to demonic casting. And I suppose that will round out the 'common' techniques. One of my players already has a secret school involving magic body art, that turned out pretty cool. (Sort of a cross between Alchemy and Spirit Magic.) Re: oil of vitriol - Yeah, that's where I got it from. Always loved the term. I'll be posting game logs starting in a few weeks. I run 'em every two weeks, give or take. (My old D&D logs may be of interest to anybody who runs D&D - I did what I could to make it interesting. Just ran out of steam at the end. But I did have Bee-mounted Beholders, a PC taking a death to healing energy during a 'baptism' by crazy Treants in a healing font, an evil twin gained in game, and other fun stuff.)

Re: Sharing my notes Nah, it'll be as much work either way. There are multiple types of caster in my background, each with their own particular way of doing things - even cribbing off of someone else's list, I'd have to adapt each spell to the type of caster it goes to. Plus, I'm trying to tie what casters can do into the background, which involves thinking about what I'm doing a fair amount anyway. For instance: the Kalasian culture is sort of Greek/Roman inspired. They assimilate gods and rituals from other cultures. The Shyrynmor are Norse-ish, and they worship an ancestral hero, whom their Berserkers believe they call on for powers. The Shyrynmor also use Death Magic, a charming form of sacrificial magic with various necromantic powers (best healing available, etc.). All Shyrynmor Berserkers take part in a sacrificial ritual - as the victim - because they believe it allows them to go on a vision quest in the land of the dead. (The caster puts them to the edge of death, and calls a ghost into their dying body. Their soul goes 'somewhere else' for the duration.) The Kalasians have adopted the Shyrynmor ancestral hero as their god of war, and taken up some of the practices of their berserkers. But they outlawed Death Magic ages ago, and it turns out that without that key ritual, Berserker powers cannot reach their maximum potential. Kalasian magic can't duplicate it, and even if they could, it'd be taboo for religious reasons. Use of Death Magic vs. Kalasian Sorcery has other implications, too - the Shyrynmor engage in harvest rituals a la The Wicker Man, while Kalasians, (whose magic is more attuned to classic elemental energy), control the weather to protect their crops, etc. From a writeup point of view, Death Magic and Kalasian Sorcery have different limitations, and the spells are expected to work different ways - Death Magic is mostly touch based to 'complete the circuit,' while the Sorcery tosses more conventional fireballs and lightning bolts, etc. *shrugs* Either way, I've painted myself into a ton of work. Not that that's a bad thing. I don't intend to handle everything every college of magic can do, just enough samples that my players understand what to expect from each one, then I'll write as needed. Killer Shrike's site is excellent, though. I looked there for help about armor stacking, already.

Re: Sharing my notes Thanks. I'm still having some trouble with certain elements of the magic system, but we did a character creation/shakedown thing last Saturday, and what people had mostly seemed to work. (Just not sure about my final couple schools of magic, and then I need to write like a hundred spells. *sigh*) Oh, and for anybody who looks: ideas and comments and whatnot are welcome.

Hey, I have finally gotten my group off of D&D, and over to Fantasy HERO (huzzah!). I've put up a wiki for my players here, thought I'd share it in case it was of any use or interest to you guys.

Re: Variable Power Characters in the Same Game Happy to help. And yeah, it's been great. The game is set in my pet universe, and after about four games in it, this is the first time I've really gotten to show it off. (All the original games used the HERO system - I still have a ton of applicable notes that I eventually hope to turn into a website or something...) The other characters in my group were: - An East Coast EMT who became the living embodiment of The Pilgrim and The Fool, able to travel between worlds under his own power, and find virtually anything. (He was probably the most powerful member of the group, even exceeding God Guy in some venues. His check was that he was the plot hook guy: the forces that invested him with supernatural power could also direct his movements, and give him cryptic visions of what he was Supposed To Do.) - A powerful wizard from, effectively, Dark Sun. - A mutant psionic archaeologist from a post apocalyptic world. Like The Pilgrim, he's an archetype of some sort, but his powers don't work properly, and both he and his world are slowly ceasing to exist. - A video store clerk with quasi-omniscience. (He'd be a discussion about game balance all on its own: he could tap into the collective unconscious of a world, and had a chance to know things anybody anywhere there knew). And, as replacements when earlier characters were written out: - A cyborg from a dimension spanning secret society. He replaced God Guy, who is now on more of a "cameo appearance" status. - A networked intelligence composed of countless Psychically Bonded Duplicates (mild variance, incapable of recombination, or even occupying the same universe), one per human occupied world. It exists across a swath of space so vast that it defies measurement: his character sheet actually has "functional immortality" written on it, since nobody could catch all his dupes. He replaced the all knowing video store clerk. As for difficulties, let's see: Keeping the party together: Some of my party members were vastly more mobile than others, and sometimes it was hard to rein them in enough to keep group cohesion. This problem would probably be easier to handle in a less worldhopping/epic scenario, but any time you have fliers or desolid guys or whatever, the group will split up. Often right before the big fight of the evening, too. Underutilized abilities: Between the scenarios I presented, and choices the players made, some characters didn't get to use major aspects of their abilities much. For instance, the wizard had a lot of infiltration skills, and a good shape shifting ability, and I don't think they were ever used to advance the plot. He was frustrated enough with it that I arranged a radiation accident to swap the power out for something else, eventually. If I ever do this again, I'm going to think more carefully about how well all the power sets mesh - in retrospect, I should've known they'd never spy. Hrm. I had a few other issues, but they were more facets of my campaign world, than difficulties from mixed power groups: dealing with freeform/VPP abilities, dealing with monstrous information powers, etc.

Re: Variable Power Characters in the Same Game Happy to oblige. I've spent months ignoring conventional wisdom about GMing, and as my game is almost over, I'm in a mood to share what I learned from this high concept experiment. Re: Encounter Balance: Well, that's sort of complicated. Here goes: Sword Guy had the equivalent of a full martial art, Defense Maneuver, Lightning Reflexes, Danger Sense, Missile Deflection, Rapid Attack, Tactics, and a bucket of CSLs. He also had passable investigative skills: some Tracking, Conversation, etc. God Guy had a cosmic VPP...but part of the deal was: it ran off of an END Reserve which wasn't always quick to recharge (varied by location), and he was also RPed with all of the savvy and finesse of a 13 year old. (My best player got to play him, and never broke character.) The limited nature of God Guy's power is a critical aspect of mixed power games, IMO: the really high end players in mixed power games should have some check on their power so that they don't dominate every situation. Limited uses are an easy, classic one (see D&D) - other stuff includes being too "noisy" (see The Belgariad), conditional (no vampire powers in daylight)...doesn't really matter. There should just be some reason the godlike beings can't walk all over the mortals in every situation. Anyways, against normal enemies, Sword Guy cleaned up: his attacks tended to be stuff like "jump kick enemy A in the chest, flip off of him and slash enemy B." God Guy, on the other hand, was not that effective: he hated burning END on "mere mortals," and while his hand to hand attacks were huge, he threw them at base combat value. Skilled opponents just dodged him. Against godlike threats, Sword Guy had to hang back...but God Guy wasn't actually that great without tactical assistance. He had raw power, but required the advice of the party about how to exercise it effectively. (It was hilarious when they didn't use it properly, too: on one occasion, they were attempting to prevent an Old One from devouring a world. Realizing that the problem was that The Stars Were Right, Wizard Guy suggested that God Guy might simply push the planet's moon into space and mess up the stellar alignment. God Guy got tired of waiting for a better answer and just did it, saving the planet from the Old One, but destroying the ecosphere utterly.) I also made sure combat wasn't the only way to advance the plot, as these were the only two characters out of five that were particualrly suited to fighting. A lot of the game has centered on RP or puzzle solving - areas where God Guy was a great resource, but only if the other players directed him. He had no investigative skills of any kind, but could perform all sorts of tasks if clued in: Clairsentience, EDM, Invisibility, Summon, etc. This was the other really key part of encounter balance: I didn't just make sure that the every player had a chance to shine. I made sure they actually had to work as a team to get a number of tasks done, combining their powers and skills creatively. This is a good idea in mixed power groups: have the low powered guys make the high powered guy more effective, or vice versa. If everybody is a key to success together, there'll be less resentment about power imbalances within the team. (Frex, the angel might do some Flash attack to blind the opposition so the normal guys can machine gun them down safely, or whatever.) Anyways, hope that helped. If not, I'll be happy to blather more.

Re: Variable Power Characters in the Same Game

Re: Bizarre Alien Mind -- power musings Oooh. Reminds me of something I'm giving to some alien horrors I've been working on: Horrible Insight: Major Transform 1d6 (Human into insane human, Cured by therapy), Works vs. EGO, not BODY (+1/4), Partial Transform (+1/2), Damage Shield (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2), Penetrating (+1/2), BOECV (Mental Defense applies; +1), Continuous (+1) (86 Active Points); Always On (-1/2) Only much, much friendlier.

Re: Matryoshka Madness *ponders responses* I'm a little torn. I'm pretty sure EDM is the "classic" answer to this problem, but it's sort of like using Desolid to model invulnerability: whether or not it's costed the way I'd like, it introduces weird rules artifacts. Frex, technically you could use heavily Transdimensional attacks to hit the critter, when it really ought to be vulnerable to heavily Indirect attacks (like, typical ECV attacks should strike it at no additional cost). Also, it requires handwaving a number of interactions with enhanced senses. The Vehicle thing probably covers the combat effects about right, but it leads to costing weirdness. I think Blue Jogger's pretty much on the money for what I'm after - the monster is really getting cover out of the whole "inhabit a body" thing, which is pretty expensive. I'm going to give it: 1) Persistent DCV based on size (the creature wouldn't get any limitations on this - if it chews its way out of a dead host and goes skittering across the floor, it'll still be really hard to hit). 2) A little Armor and PD with the limit "Only up to the amount possessed by the Host and the Host's armor," to reflect the host getting in the way of attacks. (After all, if the host is wearing a bulletproof vest or something, the creature will also see a benefit from it.) 3) A little Armor UBO (Host's Vitals Only) to reflect that the monster will actually block some attacks against the host, as well. (The monster could easily be positioned to soak a knife blow to the host's kidneys, or something.) 4) Invisibility vs. Sight, to handle the cover granted by the host. Making a called shot against the monster would probably be pretty hard. I'd call being in the host's viscera probably a Minor Side Effect, because it mimics a mild Physical Limitation at best. That way, it interacts normally with stuff like Indirect/ECV attacks, N-Ray Vision, etc., and still has to pay a prohibitively high cost. Between that and a big Mind Control or BOECV Transform, a really nasty version of this power is completely out of the reach of most PCs... Thanks for the hand, guys.

Re: Matryoshka Madness I'm wanting the monster to survive the death of the host, just needing to cut its way free. I'm also assuming that the host survives the initial merging - I'm picturing this beastie as more of a puppetmaster than a body snatcher/replacement brain.

I am doodling with a Horrific Monster in HERO that crawls inside its host and dominates it from the inside. Most of it is pretty straightforward, but I'm stuck on something: I can't figure out a way to model a creature that is inside another creature. Like, supposing the monster is actually entwined with the host's vital organs, and could presumably be damaged by a called shot there...how would a person write that up in game terms? I've considered some of the following notions: - Giving the creature a defensive power (Armor or maybe Force Wall) to represent the host being in the way of attacks directed at it. - Using a self-targeted Entangle on the critter with a limitation indicating that the host takes Feedback damage. - Using Desolid, with the "commonly available SFX" being a called shot to a particular spot on the host. - Giving the creature a Vulnerability or Susceptibility to attacks directed that way. None of those feel quite right to me though, so I thought I would share my headache with the class. What do you lot think about this? Disclaimer: This is a purely academic exercise. I'm running my current campaign under FUDGE because while it would be possible under HERO, it would be a *huge* mess - I'll have to talk about it under Other Genres if I ever get serious about conversion notes. Anyways, the gist of it is that my players want freeform rules, and I agree that it is sensible, but I'm absolutely dying for some rule-fu. So, here I am.

Re: How to make an alchemy power. We actually had an alchemist in the last Heroic Fantasy game I was in (50+50, supposed to be doing a D&D adventure without being so bound by D&D's Vancian magic, etc.). We hashed out the arguments here, and reached a similar conclusion to Outsider - trigger items. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, every potion in our alchemist's formulary required the following modifiers on the power as a baseline: RSR (Alchemy, No Active Point Penalty to Skill Roll) -0 Set Trigger (When Potion is used) +1/4 Extra Time (Brewing, activation only): 6 Hours, -1 3/4 Extra Time (Full Phase, activation only) to Quaff, -1/4 Focus: Obvious, Expendable, Fragile (finished vial of potion), -1 1/4 Concentration: 0 DCV while brewing, -1 (any combat past harsh words ruins all prep work) 4 Charges per batch, default: -1 Minor Side Effects, (failed Alchemy check creates unpredictable potions) -1/4 Variable Limitations, -1/4 (character must have access to either a Bulky Focus Lab, higher quality ingredients, or their RSR limitation gets worse) This allowed the player all the power of a crafting skill: assuming he had enough time and ingredients, he made permanent equipment that was effectively Independent (without getting the point break). They could be handed out to the party, or even sold, without worrying about the artificial constraint of Delayed Power. And the GM could utterly restrict what we could and couldn't get by controlling the flow of ingredients - it's exactly the same notion as "Items contain CP" without having to actually do it. And alchemy was dangerous if we weren't in a civilized area, with access to a proper lab. And then the potions were created around pretty flexible powers. Like, instead of taking separate recipes for "Sleeping Powder" and "Wolfsbane Arrows," he covered poisons with: Poison Recipes: Drain any Physical Attribute one at a time (+1/4), Variable Trigger (+1/2), NND (LS [Poison]; +1/2), Variable Advantage (+1/2 Advantages; Limited Group of Advantages; +3/4); Extra Time (6 Hours, Brewing Time; -1 3/4), OAF Fragile Expendable (Difficult to obtain new Focus; Lab & Finished Flasks; -1 1/2), Concentration, Must Concentrate throughout use of Constant Power (0 DCV; -1), 4 Charges (-1), Side Effects (-1/2), Variable Limitations (requires -1 worth of Limitations; Bulky OAF Lab or More Difficult Skill Roll; -1/2), Requires An Alchemy Roll And A KS [Poisons] Roll (No Active Point penalty to Skill Roll; -1/4) So one point expenditure covered almost any poisonous weapon he wanted. Healing Potions were bought on a Compound Power, where additional dice required increasingly rare components - like, the first 1d6 only required rose petals, but ramping it up to 4d6 Heals Limbs required reasonably fresh blood from a regenerating creature - we never, ever saw one in play. He also had Invisibility Potions (Invisibility plus Naked Power Advantage: IPE for melee attacks), Grenade Recipes (RKA, Range By STR, 1 Hex AoE, Variable SFX), and Shapeshifting Potions (Continuous Charge Multiform, required a piece of the monster to be emulated). It worked really, really well: we had an edge as a whole group, but we were very careful with them because they were a huge pain to restock.