Cosmosemeritus

Re: What pre-5th Edition Hero books do you still use? I mostly run a fantasy campaign, so much of my old 4th and pre-4th ed Champions stuff has been unused for quite a while, but if I ever get back in the Supers mood I'm sure many of those titles, like Road Kill, Mind Games, and Wrath of the Seven Horsemen, would be put to good use. I still use my old Fantasy Hero Companions for ideas as well as the Hero System Almanac. The spirit rules in the Almanac make for some interesting adversaries.

Re: Probably not the right place, but... Grats on the employment. Both sound like good positions (even if Corona smells like cows ;-) ).

Re: creating a new world using a new system I don't think the term is 'whore' if you don't get paid for it. Unless of course you do get paid for gaming.... Now how did you accomplish that? And here I thought he did it to save his eternal soul. No matter the reason many appreciations to him.

Re: Quick Hero Not to worry. The problem lies within my PDF viewer, not your PDF or how its posted.

Re: creating a new world using a new system I have to disagree to a point, Thia. I feel that painting the background with broad brushstrokes helps set the color tone for the foreground details. (sorry the painting metaphor kinda got stuck in my output buffer). I think its good to work from big to small, but only working on the gross generalities. Like Universe has gravity => Spherical planet with oceans and landmasses => General Geography of the continent of focus => climate and rough social ideas for the region => Now you have a foundation upon which to build your city. Then work outwards with the details.

Re: FH without Stun That's cause its usually involved, one way or t'other.

Re: Turning Undead that bad huh? hehe Back to OP, does anyone remember the Spirit rules from the Hero System Almanac back-in-the-day? The shift spirit power seemed like a good way to build turn undead. But I never developed the idea as none of my players have ever expressed any interest in the ability. (What they do want to do takes enough of my time as it is:D ). It used the idea that spirit occupied containers, so a corporeal undead was just a body being possessed by a spirit, usually bound to that body. Shift Spirit forcibly evicted the spirit from the container to the spirit plane. It worked a bit like a cumulative transform using EGO instead of Body to determine when the effect was enough to exact the change. When purchased as Turn Undead it was usually bought Area Effect, OAF, and requiring some kind of skil roll. I haven't given much thought to the idea since moving on to 5E, but this thread made me remember this. Perhaps something similar could be constucted from the 5E ruleset?

Re: Quick Hero I wasn't able to get the pdf open on my first try. I'll try again later as I'd like to see how you've approached this. I tried this in the past (4th ed.) using a bunch of package deals. Essentially the player chose a racial package and a 'class' package and that spent most of their points, including characteristics. Multi-classing was done by having 'light' versions of the class packages and allowing the character to choose two of them. I never actually required the purchasing of the class packages and after the players became more accustomed to the Hero System they stopped being used in their entirety. Since moving my game to 5th ed I haven't redone the packages as there hasn't been a demand yet.

Re: FH without Stun

Re: Magic System Question #1 I have no doubts that page 153 of a book contains the phrase you quote. I call into question the identity of this wondrous tome of lore and your perception of it as the only real rulebook. I asked for assistance locating the rule you mentioned, stating where I had already looked, in the hopes that you'd simply reply with a page number and the title of your reference source. If you had, not only would I have thanked you for the information, I would have been better informed as to which version of what ruleset you were using and thus been better equipped to respond to your other posts in a helpful manner. Instead, not only do you omit the title, but you also insultingly cast doubts upon the validity of my source material. Now I don't really care if you're using 4th Ed Champions, 3rd Ed AD&D, SJ's Gurps, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mechanics as your real rulebook. It doesn't matter. We're here to discuss a game, and in the process of sharing our ideas we learn from each other. If you really want to participate you should learn to respect the opinions of others, especially if you disagree with those opinions. Respond as you will. After reading some of your other posts, especially your responses to criticism, I fear you may be on your way to becoming a forum troll. I hope you instead grow up just a teensy, tiny bit (we are gamers after all) and learn to respect others.

Re: 5d6 Hero

Re: What I learn playing a GM. After skipping the last 4 pages of the thread... I miss being a player. Correlary: When you are permitted to be a player again, don't back-seat GM. Its just plain rude.

Re: Holding 'em Back If a character had an extremely low strength (and perhaps the mass to match) is it within your idea of the effect to still not immobilized the character? Perhaps instead of a strength drain, increase their mass through a transform (OK OK I know I think tranforms solve anything ) however I'm half asleep and don't remember if this will have the desired effect on movement and strength output.

Re: Magic System Question #1 Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight....

Re: Magic System Question #3 Good question. Could be done with Usable by Others and/or Area Effect I suppose. Something like: Retrocognitive Clairsentience (Sight Group), Usable As Attack (x8 maximum weight per inanimate target; +1 3/4) (110 Active Points); One Sense Only, Normal Sight (-1/4), Fixed Perception Point (-1), Limited Power Recipients must remain within 2" of Target "photograph" (-1/4), Limited Power Whatever Spell Lims you use (+var) 44 CP not counting your 'normal' spell lims. I chose usable as an attack as the caster would have control over the clairsentience. If its not a big deal you could drop it down to Useable Simultaneously.

Re: FH without Stun I don't. I wouldn't recomend it either. Stun is one of the major reasons to play Hero; Fantasy or otherwise. I disagree with your reasoning, but I'll still try to help. In theory, the characters would keep going until they reach their negative body value. Both of these can be done using the Impairing/Disabling options in the 5ER. And of course there is always the standard rule that a limb can only take 1/3 of a character's body in one hit before getting lopped clean off. Lets see... with Stun every 10 CP of Con gets you 5 Con, 1 ED, 1 Rec, 10 End, and 2(.5) Stun, which is 10 points of secondary characteristics. Without stun, that only drops to 8, which IMO isn't enough to lower the cost of Con. But if you are also not using Endurance and Recovery, then Con is barely even worth a single CP per point. IMO

Re: Turning Undead Thanks Tetsuyama. My knowledge of D&D is about 15 years out of date.

Re: Magic System Question #1 I'm afraid I must have missed that one. I just scanned pages 237-241 5ER and didn't see this. Where is this mentioned?

Re: Turning Undead

Re: Turning Undead I haven't had the subject pop up in a while but back in the day I used Shift Spirit from the Hero system Almanac. I included a limitation that made it require a presence attack to deliver. I'm not sure how I'd do this in 5ER. Perhaps as an EGO Drain, 'doesn't affect usable EGO'; and give all affectible undead a phys lim 'destroyed when EGO reaches negative EGO value.'

Re: Divide by 3? For my own campaign I spent much time wrangling with the issues of balancing power with point expenditure while also balancing spellcasters with non spellcasters with hybreds. I finally did away with CP cost for spells alltogether. Spellcasters pay for the ability to use magic as one or more talents, then pay for their character's aptitude as one or more skills. Skill roll penalties are determined by the unpaid real point cost of the spell and all spells are written by the GM, even if the PC is researching the spell. The irony is that since working with the players to come up with this system, no one's yet made a spellcaster, so its still untested.

Re: Magic System Question #1 Since points aren't actually expended until the the power is acquired, a limitation that affects only the acquisition of the said power wouldn't limit the use or effectiveness of the power itself, thus be worth no points. How about this? Require spellcasters to have a power that allows them to learn new spells. It could either be a major transform or a custom power (or something else). Have it take a long time, have side effects, cost cubic furlongs of endurance, and any other nasty limitations. If you use a transform, perhaps have it target the character's EGO or INT rather than Body.

Re: Magic System Question #1

Re: Magic System Question #1 I notice the use of the word painful in your description... Painful to the character or painful to the player? Not much is more painful to the player than the loss of CPs. In that vein you might consider having the learning process require the expenditure of points prior to a roll (skill-based or whatever). If the roll fails, the points go away; like dropping that independant focus while crossing the Bottomless Pits of Targasso.

Re: What setting does your campaign use? A long time ago on a dinner table far, far away... My best friend and I started an AD&D (1st ed, as it was later known) campaign using the boxed Greyhawk setting and the recently published T1-4 Module. We didn't play it often, mostly playing a modern-genre game using Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, but we did play it semi-regularly until I left for college about 3 years later. When I returned home from college I brought 4th ed Hero with me and started the long and painful process of converting my old gaming group from their pagan d20 habits. Oh how they wailed when I threw their platonic solids in the crucible and burned their saving throw tables at the stake! It was during this tumultuous time that our old Greyhawk game was re-born. Since the original campaign was based out of only a few supplements, much of the game world was devoid of detail. Over time the details have played themselves into being, with the players creating much of the campaign background themselves through the backgrounds and actions of their characters. Today the campaign probably bears little resemblance to the published campaign world, but its ours and we're happy with it. Magic bears no resemblance to AD&D systems, having more in common with Gygax's Mythus Magic system. Gunpowder, but not guns, exists in the game though the PC's don't know from where it arrived.