CTaylor

Re: What books should I buy??? In all honesty I recommend getting pretty much everything Hero puts out related to the genre you want to run. Get Fantasy Hero, the grimoires, the bestiaries, everything. Even the things not directly related to your campaign can be helpful for ideas and you might find things you hadn't considered.

Re: What books should I buy??? I might also suggest my Fantasy Codex, with the hundreds of spells and suggestions on how to build magic with the Hero toolkit.

Re: Deluxe Edition of The Fantasy Codex in print! Thanks Patriot! I'm working on the art for volume 2, I hope to have that out this summer.

Re: Deluxe Edition of The Fantasy Codex in print! And thanks for your purchase! It really did surprise me how much more expensive the color printing was, and how small the increase in price the hardbound was compared to soft cover.

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED I agree, I would certainly never want to replace the Speed system in Hero, it has a very interesting effect on combat and simulates special combat training better than any I've seen in dozens of game systems. For those who want greater variety in the system, some randomness could be introduced, such as taking cards with everyone's name on them, putting one in for each speed each character has, then shuffling them up but I'd avoid that simply because the speed 3 guy could end up acting 3 times before anyone else. Plus, the predictability of speed helps simulate actual combat experiences, such as timing someone's actions and then moving to disrupt that.

I worked up a hardcover full color edition of the Fantasy Codex, it includes a new spell system and better indexes. It also costs 75 bucks: color printing is spendy! I'm not sure anyone will actually buy one, but its out there. I also have a hardcover black and white version; its a bit cheaper at $29.99 Then there's the old spiral bound soft cover, its a lot more thrifty just under 25 bucks. Next stop: volume 2...

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED The game system Aces & Eights dumps all the usual systems and breaks everything down into 10ths of second actions which happen simulntaneously. Cocking your gun: 3 counts (3 tenths of a second). Aiming: 2 counts. Changing to another target: depends on the arc you change along, can be up to 10 counts. Moving is in counts, you move five feet every x count, depending on crawling, walking, trotting, running, and so on. Its an interesting system, you start with initiative rolls (adjusted by DEX) then everything just happens when you get to the appropriate count, but if you thought Hero combat was slow whoa nelly is this system slow. It's like watching a gunfight in super, super slow motion, one frame per second. Sped up it would move and behave like a real fight but in game time its just astonishingly session-devouring. Call of Cthulhu has a system I've long considered using for Hero, where half phases take place at half your DEX and are handled separately. You do your first half phase action in order of DEX, then your second half phase action when half your dex comes up. Half move on DEX 24, fire on DEX 12. That seems like a decent system, because it reduces the "teleport around the map" effect and if two people move on the same phase you can react to someone's action before they take another.

Re: Advice: detecting magic from a distance I just made it a house rule that all magic, unless it is bought with a level of invisible power effects at +1/4, is visible to mages. It is a variant on "Mental Awareness" called "Mystic Awareness" which you get for free by buying a magic skill roll. You can also just buy Mystic Awareness for 3 points if you want.

Re: Transdimensional PREsence I'm just addressing the question: interdimensional use of presence.

Re: Transdimensional PREsence Yeah if it is just a special effect, transdimensional isn't needed. If you are actually a creature in another dimension who wants to presence attack people in this one, you'd need it (and indirect). And I'd probably knock dice off the effect for a disembodied force of will once the characters figured out that's all it was.

Re: Transdimensional PREsence You'd need indirect on it too but you could use your presence from another dimension if you bought transdimensional on it. I'd guess that it would be a pretty hefty subtraction to the attack though: you're in another dimension, how seriously should I take that?

Re: Any house rules on a different dice system? Fair enough, I'd have to agree with that statement. Certainly it would make any Hero products put out before 6th edition quaint and less useful to buyers to change the mechanic, which is at least a slightly compelling reason to not change it.

Re: How would you stat up gods in Hero System? From another perspective, I think a pantheon of gods that shows up in a Champions game and demands worship would be a fun game: seeing that they used to be pretty scary to humans back in the day, but now they aren't much more than the average cape.

Re: Any house rules on a different dice system? Just a guess but it seems pretty likely to me at this point. I wouldn't mind either way.

Re: Any house rules on a different dice system? Seems to bother some, or at least confuse them when you have high and low rolls (even though all games have it). Welcome to the boards, and 6th edition hero probably will go roll high.

Re: Roll-high rules for Skills and Attacks and such? I expect we'll see Hero 6th do this, so its a good idea to start practicing now.

Re: How would you stat up gods in Hero System? Yeah I'm in the "gods don't have stats" camp, or they lose their godly status. However, if you treat gods as just really powerful beings, then build them like superheroes.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game COH is a pretty cool game and concept but they really didn't put enough variety into settings. They needed to put more interesting locations into the game; I got sick of the damn office building and warehouse settings by level 10. Lots of opportunity for growth in the game still, tons they could add to it and make it more fun but I guess its probably not worth the money and time now. Last time I logged in it was heartbreaking, so few people around.

Re: How much Megascale to cover the world It doesn't take a lot of doubles to get planet-wide clairvoyance. The base is 100", so to get the full 2200km or so width of the planet (should let you peek anywhere on its surface) you'd need 15 doublings of range. Kinda spendy.

Re: Splice Actually the low end DR sucks a lot of END, but he can't use his special attack. And I try not to completely min/max characters, 17 gives the combat value but is slightly slower than other characters, just a way to give him some distinction. The only build point I'm not real sure about is the perk. I wanted him to be shifted out of dimension at least somewhat at all times, so he'd leave no trace but it's probably worth more than 3 points to leave no trace evidence: no fingerprints, no DNA, no hair, etc. I could have bought him invisibility to tracking but that's pretty expensive for what amounts to a meaningless power.

I started to build a character in my head one night when I ought to have been going to sleep and the idea kept building until I had to take notes and build him the next day. He looks like a GM nightmare at first blush: he has about every stop sign power in the book from transdimensional and indirect to desolidification usable by others and an AVLD attack, even damage reduction at the 75% level. Yet the way he's built the concepts all are solid and he's heavily limited and he's got an odd sliding scale of abilities that change how and what he can do. I thought I'd share him on here and see what people thought. As characters go he's not terribly powerful, but he'd be very effective in some ways. His N-Ray plus affects solid and indirect/transdimensional strength lets him do some strange things, like swipe a wallet through someone's body or grab someone and pull them through the wall (they have to be willing, of course - not enough points to buy it as an attack). His most powerful ability, the HTA, combines to about 70 active points although it will be effective against all but the very toughest opponents.

Re: Opinions wanted on a custom limitation If you give any "hero points" or fate points or what have you, this could be a way to compensate characters who deliberately cripple a power: give them one point per adventure arc for each of these powers; but only after people have gotten xps and could have progressed further with the powers they chose not to for rp or character concept reasons.

Re: Pointless Hero I think a good group of experienced hero players would do this well. I find the points and level limits actually helps me build a better character but I can see how others might find it uncomfortably restrictive.

Re: Opinions wanted on a custom limitation That's because his characteristics are what is normal, not his other abilities. I'm not arguing that NCM ought to be retained in the game, I'm just noting what its purpose and justification is.

Re: Opinions wanted on a custom limitation NCM is a bonus for being within concept and limiting yourself, like multipower.