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Hierax

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  1. Reactions to 6e

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Reactions to 6e

     

    I paid about $1,500 CDN for a 21" pivot about 5 years ago. A 17" or 19" one should be really cheap by now... Hmm, a 22" pivot is $270 CDN! Wow, if you have a desktop why wouldn't you have a pivot monitor?!

     

    It's actually an odd artifact of computers that monitors are landscape orientation by default, portrait makes so much more sense, especially if you deal with books and e-books. They had pivoting CRT's in the early-mid 90's but cultural innertial and needless tradition reach even into the high tech world.

     

    Just saying, if you read a lot of stuff on the screen, be it webpages or e-books, the absolute best investment you can make for your desktop is a pivoting monitor.

     

    Sorry, end of digression. Back on topic. "Nuff Said"

  2. Independent limitation in 6E

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Independent limitation in 6E

     

    Independent is almost exclusively used on Foci but it doesn't have to be.

     

    Personally, I also found Independent great for granted powers that exist outside of the character but aren't necessarily tied to a physical item:

     

    • Independent powers of Office - you get the power as long as you hold a certain position and/or rank, but if you lose the position you lose the powers - great for Political and Military -base.

     

    • Independent powers of divine favour - perfect for Cleric/Priest spells that defines them from Wizard spells is that the power isn't their own, it belongs to the god and/or the priestly hierarchy (thought the latter is more a power of office than favour) and the favour can be removed.

    The powers can be taken away but not just by taking away an item.

     

    Independent offered a discount for items that weren't really part of the character himself but ones that the character was merely the current custodian of. In this way they offered an intermediary step between regular Foci-based Powers and Free Equipment, and in my mind extra stages of granularity means you can simulate more things.

     

    As a minor digression, as for Foci an odd problem was Independent was used for Magical Items but not for regular items so you'd get weird things like mundane items being more expensive to build than magical ones.

     

    Independent was a big Limitation but it had a huge downside compared to a regular Focus, if you lost it you not only lost the power temporarily until you could get a new focus, you lost Character Points! Great for guys that want to build their own magic items, sure they get 'em cheap but gamble on losing the points (Sauron I'm lookin at you!).

     

    Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what I mean how Independent added value to the game.

     

    In contrast, it didn't take anything away from the game having it, and it was a straight forward mechanic that there wasn't any debate over. At worst it could be seen as a power-gaming ploy to get a power cheaply, but it was a Limitation that could be very limiting indeed, so it was actually one of the best balanced parts of the game, IMO, YMMV...

  3. Independent limitation in 6E

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Independent limitation in 6E

     

    I think it's just plain gone. Not in the Index and I didn't stumble across it anywhere yet either.

     

    Personally I loved it and thought it was vastly under-used in the official writeups.

     

    Too bad, there's a lot of useful and cool things you can do with Independent. But it's easy enough to House Rule it back in as a Custom Modifier. Hopefully it's in the APG.

  4. Reactions to 6e

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Reactions to 6e

     

    My reaction to 6e is that it is great, there's a lot of improvements and new tools to customize games with. I'm still going through the massive tomes. The only downside is that things look like they were a bit rushed to get them out for GenCon, but I haven't seen a book without errors yet so I'm not letting that get in the way of all the greatness!

     

    P.S. my advice for reading .pdf get a pivoting flatscreen monitor, I got one about 5 years ago and they've got to be a heckofalot cheaper now but you can see pages at a size that is even bigger than the paper hard copy so reading on screen is not a strain.

  11. 6th Edition Hero System

    in HERO Games Product Line

    Posted

    Re: 6th Edition Hero System

     

    It's all coming today. We just want to make sure of some stuff on the file compression; the PDFs are pretty large.

     

    If they're full colour and that many pages I bet they are!

     

    Adding a Greyscale download option would give the best of both worlds - small file size and colour -- it's faster/easier way to get the smaller individual file size than say breaking the pdfs into separate files for each chapter.

  14. Sixth Edition Showcase #8: APG Goodies

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #8: APG Goodies

     

    A more-serious-than-you'd-expect question for Steve:

     

    Can chucking be used on materials other than wood? Examples: stone, plastic, dirt, metal, bananas, milk chocolate...?

     

    Chucking normally applies to a single SFX, by default this is Wood but at Character Creation another material SFX could be chosen, such as the examples that you state.

     

    In the unpublished manuscript for the Ultimate Chucker, however, the Variable SFX is the recommended solution to be able to fully Chuck any sort of material.

  18. Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Sixth Edition Showcase #6: Defense Powers

     

    Again more good changes!

     

    Combining defensive powers is a great idea and giving walls BODY makes you wonder why they didn't have them before. The page sample looks good. As for the sense powers, I'll have to take a closer look at them later ;)

     

    I really appreciate these sample teasers, sure they don't tell the whole story but they are enough to whet the appetite and make me hungry to get the full meal served up - Thanks!

  19. Halflings for my world

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Halflings for my world

     

    Looks pretty good.

     

    I'd also go with something more like 5 STR.

     

    I'd go a minor DEX bonus (maybe only +1 to +3) as it'll make them slightly better with missile weapons like slings and arrows (or maybe a +1 OCV or Range Skill Level or somesuch), help them be better burglars (or maybe a bonus to stealthy Dex skills), etc.

     

    The PRE of +5 seems a bit high, maybe +3 then they'd still get the skill bonus. PRE attacks though? Maybe a +1 with Social Skills if well-liked the effect your going for. But defensive PRE would be appropriate, but EGO could do that too.

     

    They should have some sort of resistance to magic influences -- Power Def, Mental Def, higher EGO, etc. and perhaps even very minor with poisons.

     

    CON I might go up to +3, but at least +1.

     

    The 1-point of longevity seems right to me.

     

    They should be a bit slower in terms of running probably about -1".

     

    Some sort of Psych Disadvantage/Complication involving eating.

     

    That sort of little tweaks, but again looks pretty good.

  20. Catalyst Spell Casting

    in Fantasy Hero

    Posted

    Re: Catalyst Spell Casting

     

    I should have mentioned it before but another similarly useful source for this sort of stuff:

     

    in Hackmaster's Hackopedia of Beasts series there is a "Yield" entry for monsters listing uses for body parts for spell component purposes (as well as medicinal, trophy, treasure). These books are laced with ideas for how to use these kind of relic-based foci.

  25. Power "Cooldown": how to write up

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Power "Cooldown": how to write up

     

    Like any MPP, if you applied the Limitation to the MPP itself you'd have to wait for the MPP to recharge/warmup before you could use any of the slots; but if you applied it to all of the slots then you could use each of them with separate cooldown/warmups; if you applied the Limitation to some slots and not others then only the Limited slots would be limited. What am I missing?

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