DreadDomain

Re: Valdorian Age

Elweir is the most detailed area, a single city rife with corruption. The most important neighbor superpower is Valdoria, which is against the practice of sorcery and slavery. There are several others, including Abyzinia (I think I spelled that right), something of the antithesis of Valdoria (ruled by sorcerers, lots of slave trade).

 

And what are the other (fairly significant) nations? What are their cultural outlook? (For example in the Hyborian Age, Howard created Aquilonia akin to France and Stygia to Egypt.)

Re: Valdorian Age

Could someone please post a real review of the book

Well it's pretty much like Conan...

please' date=' and don't say it's like Conan cause that really does not mean crap.[/quote']

 

...err...

 

Are Humans the only race left?

 

What kind of religons are there and can clerics still heal?

 

Who are the super powers(as in goverment)?

 

Is there a major bad guy who everyone looks at and says "yep he's the bad guy"?

 

Is there any reason to play anything other than a fighter or thief?

 

 

Kidding aside, I would like to know more about all these aspects as well.

Re: Valdorian Age

I would be very interested to hear more about the different nations/regions. You know something along the line of :

"Khor is somewhat akin to Cimmeria"

"Valdoria could be compared to Aquilonia but with a significant maritime aspect"...

"You can imagine ***** as if the Rus developped in an Egyptian inspired culture"

Anyone would like to enlightened me?

Re: Starting from 8's in Primary Characteristics

I use the old FUZION rule for STR. 10 STR = 220 lbs off the floor, 110 lbs to the waist, 55 lbs over the head. I think it works fairly well. And, IMO, an 8 STR seems typical for most people (at my best, I may have had a 10). TUB also has some ideas on how to determine lift.

 

For what's its worth, when I finally do THE DERELICT, the sample PCs will all start with 8s before I add in any Package Deals.

Personally I prefer the Ultimate Brick rule :

• Off the ground 100%
  
• Hip level 90%
  
• Clean and jerk 50%
  
• Snatch 40%
  

I just think it makes more sense under that system I am about Str 10-11 considering clean & jerk (I don't see myself as particularly strong so it seems to fit) and lifting 110kg off the ground seems fairly doable . Under Fuzion ruling, I would be STR 16-17 considering clean & jerk (which doesn't make sense) but I clearly cannot lift anywhere near 250kg off the ground.

Re: Starting from 8's in Primary Characteristics

Call me Mr Cynical, but...

The average man can not lift 220lbs over their head without pushing! Working on STR, average people wouldn't have a strength of more than 5, probably less. Even strength 0 allows you to lift 55lbs which is beyond a lot of people.

STR 10 doesn't mean you can lift 220lbs over your head, it means you barely lift it off the ground and move it for a few step. Look in the Ultimate Brick pg 9. A clean & jerk would be 110 lbs (50%) and a snatch would be 88 lbs (40%).

Re: Does Hero System "break" at higher levels, and if so, at what level?

I think many problems encountered by people on this thread is not so much due to "system breaking" but more to how the system was used.

Hero is a toolkit providing a lot of flexibility, power and freedom and as they say, "With great powers come great responsability". To make a game ork at *any* level, there is a minimum of control required. Of course the less point you have to spend to less abuses and balance issues arise but still, you have to adhere to a certain way of doing things, This "way" varies with genre, starting points, groups, etc.

For example, our first Hero games, many years ago, was built on 375 points. Excited by the freedom provided by the system, every players decided to create the hero he wanted and the gm was quite happy to let us do our thing. The result was less than sterling. At 375 points, our group was totally unbalanced. While a martial artist could bring down Viper's mecha with a few power kicks, the powered armor could not even hit one. Hero was not at fault here, we were. We just didn't know how to use that amount of freedom.

Now, after many campaigns at different game level, I can say that we didn't suffer such imbalance in a long time. We have played games starting at 75 points and others at 1500 points and everything went quite smoothly. Sure, there is always a player succeeding to have more bang for his money but never in an outrageous way anymore.

We curently play in a 600 points campaign and I must say it is one of our most enjoyable so far. Characters are well balanced, everybody has his tricks but nobody is a one trick monkey either.

It all comes to controlling the freedom given to us and using it intelligently.

Now to answer the initial question. "Does the system break at high level?" I would instinctively answer "Yes" just because everything tends to break at some point. I suspect this limit must be quite high (significantly higher than 1500 points) but have no clue were exactly. Hero is one of the most flexible, scalable system I know of and I have never reached that limit.

If the question would be "Can we break the system?", I would wholeheartedly answer "Yes, you can do it at any level! I know, by our own faults we did it at 375 points"...

Re: Raw STR: Marvel

Just for the fun of it, I used the SAGA to Hero conversion posted in another thread. Here are the results ( I have no clue how to make a proper table):

Hulk (non-enraged)100

Silver Surfer 100

Thor 90

Hercules 90

Hyperion 90

Wonder Man 90

Juggernaut 90

Thing 80

She-Hulk 70

Namor 70

Rhino 70

Iron Man 60

Rogue 60

Vision 60

Annihilus 60

Loki 60

Ultron 60

Power Princess 60

Warbird 60

Giant Man 50

Venom 50

Crimson Dynamo 50

Spider-Man 45

Doctor Doom 45

Dreadnought 45

Luke Cage 40

Green Goblin 35

Grim Reaper 30

Sabertooth 25

Captain America 25

Kingpin 23

Black Panther 23

Daredevil 20

Wolverine 20

I don't know about you but to me this table seems about right.

Re: Why are there never any Fantasy Hero games at the Cons?

Again, I don't want to hijack this topic but...

And it is math heavy... you're working division and subtraction and multiplication during play constantly ...

I thought about it a bit and I cannot see division or multiplication being needed during play. Can you give me examples. I may be just forgetting something. As for addition and substraction, every games have them. So speed of play depends more on how many you have to make, how many dice rolling and experience of the group.

a lot of people get tripped up by that' date=' as well as tripped up by multi-variable addition (counting normal damage for example) - one of the key reasons I've seen those combats take so long in Champions (other reasons are END, REC, and varying values in the group for SPEED). At Heroic level you're not working with as many dice and as many powers that need recalculating, so a lot of the issue fades away.[/quote']

 

Ok, we are getting at the root of our disagreement here. One thing that we tried and really enjoyed is the optional rule of rolling 1d6 for damage (sidebar page 253). We all have the "low", "average" and "high" amount of damage written on our character sheet and a full table with very level of damage is lying on the table at all time. It greatly speeded up play. No more counting bodies and stuns of 15 dice. The second thing we did is completely ignore END. It makes for less bookeeping and since the players don't have to worry about running out of juice, they can fully use there powers and the combats end faster. On average, our combats run for about 2 turns (4 players against 2 to 6 opponents).

 

Given how often you see this issue' date=' the people who can work with those numbers 'at real speed' are clearly in the minority. You can deny it all you want, your group may not see it, but they are an exception and you only have to look at the larger world of gamers who have dealt with Hero to see that. If you don't have these issues, countless gamers out there (if they believe your claim) envy you for it.[/quote']

 

Hummm.. thanks for the free psychological evaluation here...

 

Dread "the blind liar in denial" Domain (according to Arkady)

Re: Why are there never any Fantasy Hero games at the Cons?

In a four hour time slot (the norm for the conventions I've been to) all you can do with Champions is get to pahse 3 of the first combat...

I assume you are joking.

I can't see most of our Champions fights taking more then 30 minutes. Maybe an hour when it is the *BIG* fight with many villains.

The "combat takes forever" argument is in my opinion the the second worst misconception about HERO, the first being "HERO is math heavy"...

Sorry, that was completely off topic...

Re: Shadow World setting

Anyone here remember the I.C.E (I think) Shadow World fantasy setting for Hero/Chart Master (forget what that silly system was ACTUALLY called...)?

We actually played a bit in Shadow World about 10 years ago. We pretty much got interested in the setting when it became FH compatible. Of course, we got a little disillusionned when we realize they were only a few FH stats at the end of the book. The setting was a little bit too generic for my taste. Well, maybe it was not so generic but since it was so poorly described, it was hard to have an idea of what the different cultures were looking like. My friend still has pretty much everything published about SW.

Since then, Hero got new owners, ICE went bankrupted and got new owners and Shadow World is own by Eidolon Studio (but still published by ICE)...

Re: Turakian Age with no Kal Turak

I'm still pondering whether to buy TA (the whacked-out magic system put me off, but the otherwise positive comments are making me reconsider it as source material).

I sure don't want to hijack this thread but I am curious as to why you feel the magic system is whacked-out. Feel free to start another thread if you think it would be better answered there...

As for Kal-Turak, he could easily be nothing more than superstition. Some kind of bogeyman everybody blames when something goes wrong. The same goes for Turakia. It could be believed to be and evil land so nobody goes there but it could be anything else in reality, from a wasteland to a realm of xenophobic, isolationist culture/race. Heck, it could even be paradise on earth and those staying there (people controlling high magic perhaps) would themselves nurture all the rumors to keep other people out.

Okay Monolith; you're my new best russian translating friend. Want to tell me what Crimson (or Red) Angel would be?

The other names I want:

Warhammer

Warrior

White Tigress

 

Demanding aren't I?

Maybe you could try the following online translators. Not always perfect, but it helps.

http://ftp.vpcit.ru/cgi-bin/dict/bobo/word

or

http://www.online-translator.com/text.asp?lang=en

or

http://www.freedict.com/onldict/rus.html

For a quick reference to the cyrillic alphabet

http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/7635/alphabet.html

Temno-krasnyj Angel = Crimson Angel

Krasnyj Angel = Red Angel

Vojna Molotok = War Hammer

Molotok Vojnyj = Hammer of War

Voin = Warrior

Belaya Tigritsa = White Tigress

Hope it helps!

I'd be a little wary of characters identifying themselves as "Red-whatever" for contemporary Russian heroes. That's strongly associated with the Communists and the Soviet Union

Not a problem. Westerners associate red with communism not Russians. Red was already the national color of Russia before the rise of communism and still is. For example, their army is still called the Red Army.

GURPS Fantasy 2nd Ed

The same reason behind most of our business decisions: because they cost too much money to produce relative to what we can charge for them and how many we expect to sell. In short: they're not sufficiently profitable.

What about including it at the end of the book like SJG did for Fantasy 2nd? I'd be willing to pay more for a book with a nice map.

Hey guys,

I am writing a character and I would like to know how you would do the following power. I have a few ideas of my own but I rather have you tell me how YOU would do it to give me extra inspiration...

The character (a brick) is powered by some kind of energy. The energy gives him fairly high stats (uh well... brick level you know). However, he can you the energy to do all sort of neat tricks placed in a multipower.

When he uses a power from his multipower he has instant access to the power (as per the standrad multipower rules) but it does a few things:

1) All his energy enhanced stats drop by 10 to 15 AP (representing the fact that he needs to expense the energy from somewhere to use the power)

2) He doesn't have access to the multipower until his second next phase (so no powers_from the multipower until it recharges)

3) His stats and multipower come back to normal 2 phases later (Phase X : he uses the multipower, phase X+1 : stats are lowered, multipower is spent, phase X+2 : stats and multipower are back to normal)

The question is, what kind of advantages/limitations would you put on the multipower?

I am under the impression that Telekinesis and strength can be added together when TK is used at touch but I can't find where it says that. Can you confirm please?

Example: Gravitar and Grond are arm wrestling. Grond will use his Str of 90 while Gravitar will be able to use her Str of 40 and add her TK of 60 for a total of 100.