CTaylor

Re: Good resource for travel distances/day? 20 miles is quite a ways to walk, but if you're doing it for travel, it's a plausible number on decent roads... for a hero. For an ordinary person that's going to be a pretty gruelling rate. If you're off on trails it should be reduced considerably (maybe 12-15 miles) and offroad at most 5-10 miles. If you stop to hunt up food (fish, snares, hunting) you'll have to cut back by 10-25% of the distance as well. And yes, a man on foot can catch a horse in the long term, horses can move faster short term but they have to rest and eat and if you run them all day they won't make it far the next day. Horses will obediently run themselves to death.

Re: Kamarathin Hard Copies! Yeah, that's something I'm not good at either, it never occurred to me to put links in my sig here until someone suggested it. I wish I knew someone with lots of drive and interest in that kind of thing.

Re: Kamarathin Hard Copies! This area doesn't have much in the way of competition. I hit up a comic book store, but the guy didn't have the retail space to put up much in the way of RPG material. When I put out another edition (hard bound deluxe) I'll try again, this time I'll work harder at getting contact with the owner. Great to see you doing well, I hope you sell ten times what you project! I'd buy one if I wasn't so poor heh.

Re: Kamarathin Hard Copies! I tried to get the local store to carry my book but I could never contact the manager, he was like some mysterious troll living under the city who people heard of and occasionally glimpsed but could not be found. Then they "lost" the copy I left for them to look over.

Re: Kamarathin Hard Copies! How did you manage to wrangle that?

Re: Ancient Weapons and Armor I would just make the defenses of hard armor lower (slightly) and weigh slightly more - if you assign your equipment body, I'd give it slightly less. Some kinds of armor would not be available, such as chainmail. Some weapons would not be used either, and they would more simple in design. You might consider dropping the +1 OCV standard from swords, since they were usually single edged and smaller.

Re: Surprisingly Effective Builds? Martial artists + are always effective but they don't surprise me when it happens. I have a template built of a martial artist lacking 50 points, then I can plug in whatever: invisibility, extra speed and dexterity, stretching, desolidification, brick defenses, what have you.

Re: What books would you recommend? Well possibly so But I do prefer a nice book over an internet connection, it's never down or offline or suffering a power outage, and I don't need to have a wifi connection or a cord. It's just always there, like a good friend.

Re: What if spells were like weapons? A magic system I'm toying with works like this: There are different groups of magic such as Elemental, Scholarly, and Dark, and characters buy levels of power in each of these (Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, etc). The points paid for these power levels gives them access to spells within these power levels. The spells themselves are paid for with money or learned otherwise: they're free.

Re: Recommendations on Str Minimum for weapons? Crud, wrong thread heh... well I'll stick it on the correct one and delete that post! It will be as if it never existed! Sorta. Not really.

Re: What books would you recommend? Its pretty easy to bind up and get your stuff printed, its always easier to hold a book in your hand to look things up than to browse the internet.

Re: Surprisingly Effective Builds? When I built a copy of Cannonball from the New Mutants, I found that it was an absurdly powerful build; it was very cheap and easy to build a character with flight, move through levels, and a force field that was amazing in combat. I put the rest of his points into detective skills and made him a private eye so he'd have something to do outside fighting.

Re: What if spells were like weapons? I figure they are dragon poop. They fly over, crap out a mace or a sword or something.

Re: What if spells were like weapons? Every skill can, in theory, be learned on your own by anyone. I could over time learn how to make a watch, it would take a long time but I could in theory work it out. The magic system proposed seemed to make that impossible (only learn by example) sort of like the World of Warcraft enchantment system that requires the destruction of enchanted items in a rather heavy ratio to make new ones. So where did those original enchanted items come from??

Re: Recommendations on Str Minimum for weapons? Sure, and it is up to each GM, I just wanted to give my input on the question setting aside the child's relative lack of athletic ability and combat agility, the adult will hit harder with a dagger, and a fit, strong man harder yet: thus, more dangerous. Each one will get a higher damage class because of their strength over the weapon's minimum (although with a 2DC weapon they hit the cap pretty quickly).

Re: Recommendations on Str Minimum for weapons? 6 strength can press 120+ lbs, that's pretty heft. A child can use a knife without any penalties other than their innate poor combat ability and lack of weapon familiarity. 3-5 is more resonable. Ditto with a short sword: 8 is a more reasonable level. An ordinary person can fight with a short sword without having to lift weights and get in shape - if they have weapon familiarity.

Re: Recommendations on Str Minimum for weapons? Generally speaking the strength minima set in books are high, too high. A weaker than normal person ought to be able to use a dagger in a fight without trouble, so it ought to require less strength than Joe average. A short sword does not require an unusual person to wield, it should probably be about joe average level. Joe average has 8 STR.

Re: What if spells were like weapons? Well, the reason I asked that wasn't a broad metaphysical question, but in direct response to the spell system posted by Lezentau. If I'm reading it correctly, people can only learn spells by seeing others do so or being taught. So... where did those first ones come from?

Re: What if spells were like weapons? Who came up with the first spells?

Re: 'Magic Missile' style spell in a VPP with modifiers I prefer the advantage "no normal evasion" or "always hits," in which the attack becomes a stun-only attack and the power must be defined with a way to avoid the attack, but never misses. No attack roll is needed, but you still have to have a direct line of attack (it doesn't become indirect). This is a +1 advantage, and to make it do body damage is an additional +1. Combining with autofire requires an additional +1 advantage to autofire because it is an unusual attack. If you can have NNDs without breaking the game, this works, too.

Re: What if spells were like weapons? My original system was like that: you bought a power pool and learned the spells for money or found them, the points were only for the pool. Because it was a power framework, I found that it was very limiting (no power framework-based spells) and it greatly restricted mage power to very small effects.

Re: Places to Fight On top of a speeding train, underwater without any real water skills fighting sharks, and (courtesy the 4th edition Viper book) in a Planet Hollywood that is plummeting from high altitude)

Re: The "Armani of armour." As I understand it the benefit is primarily weight and bulk as well as coverage. Most body armor does not give good coverage except in specific areas and weighs quite a bit (60 pounds or more) which isn't any fun while running around active in, say, a desert. This kind of armor would be lighter and more comfortable to wear, while giving more coverage.

Re: Magic Systems: Why spells are 1/3 cost Yeah Vondy mentions a variant that works well for very creative, fast-thinking players: build each element and spell type as a skill. You have fire magic skill, then use modifiers to the skill to make the spell do what you want (-1 to the roll for it to have range, -3 for explosion, etc), or use other skill rolls (I have explosion skill and duration skill). It's a bit complicated and requires knowing the system very well but it can be interesting. Look at the cost break of spells as being like martial arts: buying a Fast Strike maneuver (+2 OCV, +2 damage classes) would cost you 20 points normally, but because it is a martial arts maneuver, it costs less: 4 points in this case. Why? Because it gives martial arts a chance in the game, as a tightly conceived package - something Hero Games has always given a cost break to. Magic is the same concept: a tightly conceived bundle of abilities with similar limitations, special effects, and build. That gives you a cost break in Hero rules. Something I suggested in the 6th edition discussion that has probably been long buried and forgotten is a power framework that lets you build anything along those lines, so that martial arts isn't a unique build, but rather a part of a framework that would let you plug in magic, or psionics, or even detective skills and abilities, whatever made sense for the game and was a tight bundle of concepts.

Re: Magic Systems: Why spells are 1/3 cost Most of what a character gets who isn't a mage gets most of their stuff for money rather than points: armor, weapons, etc, while a mage pays points for all their magic.