Cosmosemeritus

I love the probability generated values for sectional armor in theory, but in practice they fall short. It is true that the value of armor that covers 10-11 (54 chances to hit, out of 216, using a standard location roll) is much higher than the value of a piece (of the same def) that covers 17-18 (4 chances to hit, out of 216). The problem when applying this to weight of the armor is that now your breastplate weighs 13½ times as much as the pair of sabaton. And the gauntlets weigh 2½ times the sabaton (10 chances out of 216 to hit location 6). I played with a number of functions, like taking the square root of the probabilities, but eventually settled on the simplicity of just dividing the weight of the full suit by 16 and applying that number as the weight per location. It is simple, but works fairly well. Makes your maille hauberk (def 6, loc 7-14) weigh *scribbles, counts on his fingers, scratches his head, takes off one shoe* 10 kg instead of about 16.3kg, which is far closer to numbers I've seen bandied about the interwebs. Maille gloves (mittens?) would be 1.25kg instead of 0.93kg. It is a simplification, but one I live with.

*brushes fingers through thinning hair* Wow yes. I can't disagree with anything either of you've said. Mostly because Locke gets me spinning only tip-toes in. And I bountifully agree to the first sentence of your second to last paragraph. So, while lacking in the depth of economic prudence, its my opinion that for the humble GM the act of fixing a weight to value standard is a good foundation for a coinage. Doing so answers the two main practical concerns of the player: "How much of these thingies can I carry before I incur penalties to DEX rolls?" and "How many ponies can I buy with them?" Secondarily: I do like the idea that player actions, or for that matter non-player actions, can cause economic effects. I fear that's a level of detail I eschew to model, however.

Because..? Again, because..? Feedback is more valuable for discussion with some substance to support a point. True, in renaissance Europe or in republican and early imperial Rome and likely a large number of other cultures and times. Once the perceived value of coinage began to be skewed by the power, wealth, or credit rating of the issuer, then the coinage itself becomes a tradeable commodity, rather than merely the metal therein contained. If one's fantasy game is set thus, then, shirley, you can begin to be more arbitrary in value assignment. It is fantasy after all, you could have strips of printed cloth that retain value simply because the sovereign backs it, and has the credit rating to back it up. For metal coinage, the crux is still weight and value; and the ratio between the two. Those are the pragmatic aspects that are necessary for the player. In my game I started with the Carolingian model, then chose numbers to make the math easy within pragmatic reasonability. YMMV

Late to the party on the topic.... My take on coinage is to remember its all about weight of metal having value. The rest is just using names of coins from the past to give a good look and feel. If your game keeps track of encumbrance, this value to weight thing is, IMO, the pivot point of the coinage system. Like I made a silver penny in my game mass at 2g, making a coin about 15mmx1mm, about dime sized. (edit: this also has the side effect of setting the 'pound' of weight in game to be 480g, not too far off from reality). In a pile of silver coins you assume a mixture of pence, groats, sixpence, testoons or whatever... but if the piles value is X pence, it weighs, 2X grams. The coin names are flavor. Players can choose to keep track of coins, or to just keep track of how much pence value of silver they have in their sack. To maintain immersion, you include the terms in the dialogue. "It'll be a groat for your lodging, sires." "Four Pence! I could buy this hovel for that!" I also include gold coins as well. Gold being denser, even small coins are worth a lot. So I set a Crown of 60 pence to weigh 5 grams, and is about 20mm dia x 1mm thick in size. Essentially this makes 1g gold worth 24g silver. The gold to silver ratio is an arbitrary decision the GM should make. I chose numbers for ease of division (and am considering a 1:12 ratio to devalue the gold and make the coins larger). In a real economy these will vary. Dual-metal systems are not stable, but it was the common practice. TLDR, its really about the weight:value ratio. The names of the coins are flavor, and good to have. Comments and suggestions welcome.

The Doge did as a Doge does... When a Doge does his duty to a Duke, that is.

Re: UOO Math Check two years later and I still can't rep G-A *sighs*

Re: New VA campaign throws up need for 'unusual' weapon rules Just curious, if its for a heroic game, why bother defining an item in terms of points? Do you use the point values to determine the monetary cost of the item?

Re: Historical Fiction

Re: New VA campaign throws up need for 'unusual' weapon rules In my fantasy game, my father made himself a cowboy; well more precisely a cow-elf. I think he really wanted to play a western game. He'd been watching a lot of Roy Rodgers and Hoppalong Cassidy recently. Anyways he wanted a Lasso, so this is what I added to my weapons list as an unusual melee weapon (so that it required its own WF) Lasso: 0CV 0d6 Str min 5 L4 Can Grab, +10Str I didn't put an OCV bonus to the grab maneuver and didn't bother calculating the point cost as its a weapon in a heroic game, but it shouldn't be hard to calculate.

Re: How Would You... #1: Bloodreading First thing that struck my mind was Mary Poppins' measuring tape Sounds like two things are occuring in your well-written description. First there's a sense that's used to gather information about a person's bloodline; sounds like its bought with discriminatory and analyse at the very least. There's also an interpretation being made about the composition of the blood; and that sounds like a skill to me. Of course you could do it as retro- and limited pre-cognitive clairsentience. The character knows about the subject bloodline's past and gains some insight into its future. I suppose the difference would be that a skill represents knowledge that matures with age while the clairsentience power might better represent an inherent ability to intuitively interpret the data.

Re: Susano's Arms and Armor Drawings Where, sir, is your gorget? You gonna get hurt playing like that. p3 looks the best, nice action with decent contrast. Oh and uber rep for Susano

Re: Having players help w/ the logistics (esp. SPD chart) I'd think that would be determined based on the situation. In my opinion initiating combat isn't a combat action. In general, the guy who says "I shoot/hit/blast/wedgie him" first, gets to go first. The other guy can often use an abort action (or fastdraw). Then phase 12 starts. I suppose (especially in player-v-player instances) you can have two people declare thier intent to initiate combat simulaneously. Then I tend to resolve the attacks simultaneously, barring things like fastdraw.

Re: "Perk inflation" in Hero Half joking: Work a day of internet (or other) tech support and see if you still feel the same. To the rest of the thread: As I've read through this I keep thinking to myself "That depends on the campaign." For the supers campaign using the recommended point values yes granularity is increased due to more points being made available. I hesitate to call it inflation because the point costs of most individual abilities haven't changed. But my fantasy game is still 75/75; 1890's pulp game, 50/50. It is my belief that the recommended points for supers were increased in response to player feedback and to cover for the few cost increases that did occur between 4E and 5E. Whether a 1pt perk to practice a profession is worth purchasing depends on the campaign. It doesn't exist in the fantasy campaign; may be worth up to 1 point in the supers campaign, but in the right campaign could be worth a significant social disad if missing. As for the changes in character design philosophy that has lead to more detailed characters, I don't believe that the system caused that. 15 years ago the coolest character I made (and was very proud of) was an invisible, gravity-manipulating brick who could lauch the space shuttle into orbit while waltzing through an H-bomb explosion. These days the cool character is the spare-time hero trying to make the world a better place while worrying about keeping a job, feeding the kids and trying to recover from substance addiction. My tastes have changed, as have those of my fellow players. Perhaps its just me but I think we as a playerbase have grown up a bit and that's the cause of the change we see in design philosophy.

Re: Causing a Character to be Mute I seem to recall that speach could be considered a sense worth a certain set value. I don't recall what that value is, but if so, couldn't it be flashed?

Re: VVP and AP limits

Re: UOO Math Check Thanks for the input on this most esoteric of constructs. Rep all around. Except for G-A, who apparently I've repp'd too much lately.

Re: UOO Math Check Very true. The brackets were intended to make the formula recognizable and to create a visible distinction between the 'inner' power and the 'outer' one. No algebraic value was intended to be implied. You could multiply it all out to (B+BA+Ba+BAa)/(1+C+c+Cc) but then it doesn't resemble the basic real cost function. You aren't applying the limitations correctly for your example. You don't get to divide by (1 + Lim) for each limitation. You divide by (1 + sum of all limitations). It should read 20 * 1.25 / 2 as 2 = (1 + .25 + .25 + .5). Which is 12.5. Your example also doesn't demonstrate the original issue, which is the UOO-Differing Modifiers construct. If you intended the Restrainable limitation to apply to the target but the other modifiers to apply to the bestowing character you should make a distiinction that demonstrates this. I prefer to write such out like: Happy Wings. [10" Flight (20 pts), Restrainable (-½)] UOO (+1/4), Gestures (-1/4), Incantations (-1/4). It is the math for this construct that my OP is inquiring about. Its not so much about the algebra, as much as it is about the translation of the english used to describe this construct in the book. Am I translating the language in the book into math in an acceptible manner?

Re: What to do with your stuff...

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Wow, that's a nifty campaign idea. Some ideas that come to mind: Village/river-dwelling people depend on agriculture. Many worshipped feminine fertility goddesses and some may have even been matriarchal societies. Wandering peoples depend on herding. Many worshipped masculine gods that symbolized (or were symolized by) the male herd leaders of the animals they depended upon. Neolithic herdspeople often invaded the sedentary agrarians, and within a few generations the new composite city-people would worship a divine couple, the bull-headed patriarch and his agrarian wife, or counter-point the river-wreathed queen goddess and her antlered protector-god. The religions were shaped by their history and visa versa. Perhaps a society's smith-god was a century earlier the fire god of a wandering tribe who conquered a lowland village tribe after bronze (or even just copper) was introduced into their culture. Something else to keep in mind. Concerning technology, copper was used before bronze and so copper impliments should probably play a role. Bronze may have even been discovered when tin bearing ore was accidently mixed into a mass being smelted for copper production. Also smelting such materials doesn't require much; a hot campfire can smelt copper from some ores. So metal use isn't necessarily restricted to the city-dwellers. Total tangent: Depending on the time period, bronze cannons were more predominant, both on ship and on land, than iron cannon because bronze could be cast. Iron casting techniques were generally crude, and with the exception of some iron cast guns made during the reign of Henry the VIII of England, iron cast guns didn't become common until the mid-nineteenth century. On the comparison of metals: Bronze has a tensile strength of 25-44 KPSI and a Brinell Hardness of 60-110 depending on the alloy and temper. Cast Iron has a tensile strength of 25-60 KPSI and a Brinell Hardness of ~150-300 varying for the same reasons. These numbers come from the American Society of Testing Materials. Edit: (saw Old Man's post right after I posted.)

Even though there is an excellent example on page 276 of 5ER, I wanted to make sure I have the math right on the UOO - Differing Modifiers construct, if I may. 'Character' below refers to the character purchasing the ability to give the granted power to the target. B = Base Cost of granted power a = sum of advantages of power for the target A = sum of advantages of power for the character c = sum of limitations of power for the target C = sum of limitation of power for the character Real Cost = [b*(1+a)/(1+c)]*(1+A)/(1+C) Example: A fantasy spell that grants the target the ability to breathe fire like a dragon. The granted power is 6d6 EB, AE: Cone (+1), No Range (-½). The casting requires the UOO advantage (+¼), Gestures (-¼), Incantations (-¼) and RSR (-½). The spell itself has no range and the target only has the power as long as he/she/it remains within LOS of the casting character. Real Cost = [30*(1+1)/(1+½)]*(1+¼)/(1+1) = [30*(2)/(1½)]*(1¼)/(2) = [40]*(1¼)/(2) = 25 Points Did I get this right? My thanks for any input.

Re: Elves Those elves need more back. Now Orc chicks in Wow... there's some bootay. *pause* I am so off topic aren't I?

Re: Armor, Weapon, and Shield Durability/Breakability?

Re: Magic System Question #1

Re: Magic System Question #1 Thanks much puzzle solved

Re: Magic System Question #1