Bismark

Re: What I Learned Playing a Mage.... When the bad guys get too close, an Accuracy spell plus your trusty staff (or in my case, a Chandelier [look it up in a Medieval weapons book]) can be your best friend...

Re: NOBLES, KNIGHTS, AND NECROMANCERS -- What Do *You* Want To See? A few more: 1. One of the denizens of the Baghlani monoliths 2. a Ran-tari shaman (gotta love those frogmen) 3. Unscrupulous (but very, very skilled) Temirese duellist

Re: Name That Band Hero! This is too easy, but here we go: The Great Sun Jester: Psychotic motley-wearing weirdo with the ability to hurl plasma [powered off an END battery recharged by sunlight] Harvester of Eyes: Qliphothic nasty with very unsavoury habits (and no shortage of pupils )

Re: Asian Bestiary, Vol II now in Online Store Hi CrosshairCollie - so he doesn't have to do it himself, I will explain Kevin's sig for you. It's a maths/computer geek joke; '25' in base 10 (i.e. decimal notation) is the same as '31' in base 8 (also known as Octal or Oct) because: (2 x 10) + 5 = (3 x 8) + 1 Hope that's cleared everything up . As for the Asian Bestiary II - I always had a liking for the 'Rokuro-kubi' (Spinning Head Goblin) and related thingies dating back to my days playing Bushido; very wacky.

Re: Who are the greatest (?) super villains? Favourites: Dr Doom; Darkseid; Dormammu Rarely appearing but I like them anyway: Shuma-Gorath (Elder God - 'nuff said), Zom Organizations: AIM (gotta love those bucketheads! - and the wackiness that was the Cosmic Cube) Comic Relief: U-Foes (HOW many dice of Unluck? - or stupidity); Bad Guy (from 'Megaton Man') Sabretooth? Really? this guy got toasted by Iron Fist - in the dark! (it was, I believe, his first appearance - in the much missed [by me anyway] 'Power Man and Iron Fist')

Re: NOBLES, KNIGHTS, AND NECROMANCERS -- What Do *You* Want To See? To add to the non-human bad guys: Skarm! (as in the drake that caused the Desolation of the same name) The Sorceror-Priests of Khem would be good for a 'laugh' as well (they would make me laugh, if not the players )

The UK National Student Roleplaying Championships are taking place in Sheffield on the 8th and 9th of April and I have been roped into GMing a Star HERO game (like I did at the same event 2 years ago). I will be debuting yet another way of handing firearms damage, whereby weapons get points of Piercing against armour that in theory should not be able to stop the bullet inside its effective range (this includes archaic armours). This allows me to have 3 DEF leather and 3 DEF ballistic cloth, but guess which one stops the 9mm bullet (which gets 3 points of Piercing against archaic non-rigid and/or non-metal armours within effective range)? This should reduce the 'buckets o'dice' I was rolling last time where I used the 'lots of DEF and frightening weapon damage' trick instead (still only one PC got injured). Combined with the Impairing and Disabling rules, I should be abble to keep the players suitably respectful of nasty weapons while not going OTT. It also works better for fine weapon effect tweaking purposes, AP and Reduced Pen being rather blunt instruments for the job. For anyone who's interested, this is the vague outline of the game setup so far: << Sci-Fi Sub-genre: Cross between Babylon 5 and Cyberpunk Game system: HERO 5th edn [tweaked, of course] Types of characters available (all humans apart from the ship's engineer): 1. 'Corporate Samurai'-type [aka 'The Combat Monster'] - with mono-edged katana and a 2 metre-long railgun(!) 2. Ship's pilot [a fusion of Lord Flashheart (from 'Blackadder Goes Forth') and Ace Rimmer (from 'Red Dwarf')] 3. Xenoarchaeologist [complete with tanglewhip and wide-brimmed hat…] 4. Federal Agent/Cop [seriously badass] 5. Ship's engineer [an Uplifted dromaeosaur - i.e. 'raptor' - with nice blue and gold plumage (awww! cute!)] 6. Deacon of the Church of the Holy Electron [worships technology, cybered up to the gills, has alien artifact surgically implanted in his brain - the fact that no-one knows what it does is of course of no concern to him whatsoever…] 7-8. Scarily competent married couple [one engineer, one medic] 9. Ex-marine with an unhealthy interest in WMDs [and a biowar lab - in a suitcase…] >> Owing to the nature of lasers as weapons (promised 'real soon now' ever since I was a kid), the only lasers the PCs are using are laser sights, blinding lasers and lasers to ionise a path through the atmosphere so an electric shock can be sent down it(the 'wireless taser'). Most of the weapons will be slugthrowers and maybe the occasional 'screamer' (nasty sonic thingy). There will be smuggling of highty dubious items/substances involved [i think], amongst other things (I am building in as many extra plot hooks and twists as possible so as to give the party plenty to do). The 'pre-convention panic' I am having is getting all the NPCs, if not statted out, then at least named, with their purposes in the plot written up as well, plus getting the party's equipment written up in time (although the game is a week away, it needs to be playtested very soon, and Real Life [TM] is getting in the way very effectively at the moment ). Once again I will have a gaming group whose average age is less than that of the DICE I use for all my 3D6 rolls… Wish me luck!

Re: They wont die Look on the bright side - the atrocities perpetrated against the Borg in later TNG and in Voyager pale in comparison to the way Species 8472 was 'de-fanged' - 'The weak will perish' became 'come round and have a coffee' My favourite Voyager moment (and there were precious few of them ) was the bit at the begiining of Part 1 of 'Scorpion' where you see 2 Borg cubes, hear them go through their whole 'you will be assimilated' spiel, and then get effortlessly blasted into space debris ( ).

Re: SpaceCraft Miniatures... A few more manufacturers for you to check out: Ground Zero games (the Full Thrust people) (http://www.gzg.com) [bring on those 'Spikeys'! ) Brigade Models (http://www.brigademodels.co.uk) DLD productions (http://www.dldproductions.com) do some nice space stations, defsats, modular freighters and assorted warships Also, if you don't worry about the scale too much (which is not obvious on a lot of the models anyway), check out the Silent Death stuff from Iron Crown Enterprises (http://www.ironcrown.com). Hope this helps.

Re: turakian age From my campaign: Vashkor = Sassanian Persian mixed with 7-12th C. AD Islamic Persian (Samanid dynasty etc.) South Vashkor (i.e. Harge****e Devastation) nomads = Bedouin/Tuareg Ventati = Mediaeval Caucasian tribesmen (what is now Daghestan, Chechnya etc.) Sirrenic Empire - 10th C. AD Byzantine (reign of Basil II) Gorthunda = Hunnic/Magyar; Ulg-Hroi = Mongols (the demonized European view of) Khirkovy = 13-14th C. AD Russian Hope this is helpful - I use the parallels as much for ease of describing the appearance of people from those regions (especially arms, armour, troop types) as anything else.

Re: How to build a Scythe for a weapon? Try the following URL (thanks, Google ) for some info on the Dacian falx battle-scythe: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?p=19314#post19314 There is a load of info on all sorts of slashing/chopping/thrusting goodness on that site

Re: Clever Future Weapons Check out the Australian take on the OICW idea - the experimental AICW, with a seriously lightened (it would have to be ) Steyr AUG-derived assault rifle mounting a Metal Storm 'roman candle' electrically fired grenade launcher on the top (there is some info on this at the well known site for afficianados of firearm pr0n - http://www.world.guns.ru).

Re: How to build a Scythe for a weapon? Agricultural scythes would be lucky to have a base HKA of 1D6 - the STR Min (allowing for the usual HERO-style 'inflation') would be 10 though, and a -1 OCV is being a bit generous, if anything. War/battle scythes are a different kettle of fish entirely - check out the ancient Thracian Dorudrepanon and the Dacian Falx, as well as the mediaeval Faussal (the last one looks like a rather clumsy, wide-bladed and slightly curved bastard sword minus the hand guard). There are also 1-handed versions of the first 2 weapons - the Drepanon and the Sica. [The Thracian Rhomphaia is a sort of battle scythe, but a lot of the examples found, especially recently, have nearly straight blades, so are actually closer to swords.]

Re: Wondering about ideas on conscription. Conscripted 'peasants', as some of the previous respondents have mentioned, can be very different animals dependent on where they come from. The classic 'useless, unreliable armed with improvised weapons' peasants are those from areas like the Holy Roman Empire, where the fear of peasant revolt was so great that they were not allowed to own weapons, let alone train with them. A totally different kind of peasant is exemplified by the 14-16th c. Moldavian peasantry, which were required (on pain of death) to own a bow, a quiver of arrows and a sword. They were also required to practice regularly, but this was not enforced as ruthlessly (Stefan the Great of Moldavia was credited with being particularly keen to enforce all these regulations - not surprising given his run-ins with the Ottoman Empire). 'Conscripts but definitely not peasants' include (as an extreme example) the mediaeval Catholic Church's 'unfree' Knights - the ministeriales; they were effectively sergeants (not very good lancers, but very good with sword, axe and/or mace), but equipped by the church with the latest in serious hardware - often they were better armoured than most 'real' knights of the same era. They fought in a very close deep wedge formation, charging at the trot. Even the notoriously scary French knights had trouble breaking them (see the battle of Benevento, 1266AD). Kievan period Russia also had conscripted infantry - they were mainly recruited from townspeople and were often pretty well-equipped (classic Rus gear of big rectangular shield, mail or scale corselet, spangenhelm, long spear or 2-H axe, broadsword or 1-H axe, plus dagger). Some had bows instead of close-combat weapons and they supported the spearmen from the rear (they were usually somewhat lighter-armoured). Going far afield, the T'ang Chinese even conscripted the majority of their cavalry in their early years. All of these examples ram home the point even more that 'conscript' and 'peasant' are nothing like the same thing. Hope this helps.

Re: Creatures: The Unseelie Court Been a while since I saw some of these monsters - I first ran across them in the old RQ2 Gateway Bestiary, which also contained such lovelies as the Vough (another millpond hag-type), Stoorworms (legless, gas-breathing draconic types), Brollachans (amorphous shadowy spirits with a very mean streak) and Water-leapers (weird winged frog-fish combo). Must get around to doing FH conversions of these, as well as the stuff from the Palladium RPG (which had a nice array of Faerie unpleasantness). BTW, anyone who has read the (supposedly for teens) Modern Fantasy novel Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner will remember that the interpretation of the Brollachan in that book was VERY creepy; the Palugs (overgrown Scottish wildcats) were none-too-friendly either.

Re: Turakian Age Arabia? The Dahganir tribesmen of the Harge****e Devastation (yes, I know I'll be 'bleeped'…) are the nearest you will get to Arabs in the Turakian Age - they are pseudo-Bedouin types. [The Harge****e Empire of Vashkhor always struck me as a Persian-Turkish hybrid] Valdorian Age has a classic 'Hollywood Saracen' kingdom in the shape of Tharestan. I say 'Hollywood Saracen' because the titles of the nobles (Emir, Pasha) are of Turkic and Persian derivation respectively - there is very little, if any, fantasy Arab stuff which is just an Arab analogue rather than 'Arab plus the cultures/mercenaries of the Arab Empire'.

Re: Cavalry Charge , House Rules ? Everything depends on the tye of cavalry charge involved; examples below (1) 'Trotters' - Classical/Roman period cataphracts, Byzantine kataphraktoi (previously known as klibanophoroi), mediaeval German mercenary sergeants/clerical ministeriales: These guys are not the world's best lancers - the first example using their lances as long spears for stabbing, or 2-handed in a style like bayonet fighting, the others being much better with mace/axe/sword than lance. Charge at the trot in very close formation (knee-to-knee). (2) The 'psycho' approach - Sarmatian/Alan lancers. Late Roman period Germanic cavalry (Goths, Gepids, Suevi), French, Polish and Serbian knights: These guys, whatever they are armed with, thunder forward as fast as they can go with not much attention given to maintaining formation; they either win or lose dramatically. This is a genuine maximum speed 'Ug! Kill!' charge (3) The 'semi-skirmish' approach - most Classical and Roman cavalry, Gauls, Germans before they learned the full-on charge from their neighbours the Sarmatians, most Byzantine cavalry, Arab cavalry etc.: Charge at a fairly controlled speed as formation and the ability to rapidly withdraw are important. Can come badly unstuck when taking on types (2) or (4). (4) The archetypal knight: These are somewhere between types (1) and (2) - they usually commit to the charge much more than type (3), at a speed that allows then to keep some small semblance of order while not wearing out their mounts all in one go. As equipment gets heavier momentum rather than speed is the factor here. Working out OCV penalties should be easier when you know what category your cavalry fit into. Bear in mind that some of the 'psychos' had been on horseback since they were small children and would therefore have (in game terms) lots of Riding skill and mucho skill levels to offset the charge penalties (in the case of the Sarmatians, they would need them as they have a full-tilt charge technique, a low saddle [which is usually just leather bags filled with straw] with no front/rear arcons, and no stirrups). Also note that for the lance charge, the sophistication of the saddle, the height of the arcons and the stance of the rider have far more effect on the effectiveness of the momentum transfer from lance to target than do the stirrups (easily demonstrable with good old Newtonian mechanics); stirrups do, however, make life a lot easier when it comes to striking downwards with swords/axes etc. as they improve ride stability and allow standing up in the stirrups to increase leverage.

Re: Star Hero/TE weapons Design Man-pack lasers presumably use charges because they use expendable fuel cells or are chemical lasers (stay away from the by-products - much corrosiveness and toxicity… ); no real reason why shipboard lasers should not use ship's power though. They could run off batteries pre-charged by the ship's power plant, though, which would give the equivalent of a fixed number of charges before recharging was required.

Re: Super Names One of my own PCs: Moment [a 'turning force' in physics] - he was good at angling forces to deflect/reflect stuff, fly by deflecting himself away from the ground etc.; basically he was a rip-off of the Marvel guy by the name of Vector (head of the U-Foes; Hulk opponents), but without the Unluck and crass stupidity . BTW, as I just mentioned, Vector is trademarked, as is The Needle (a really old and obscure Golden Age DC villain - fought The Star Spangled Kid). Finally a couple of names that just sounded good: Baron Blight Odium

I was wondering how people running Turakian Age campaigns are dealing with areas of the map not covered by obvious historical parallels (particularly when designing package deals for characters from those areas). Obvious Parallels: Westerlands/North-western Mitharia: Western/Central Mediaeval Europe Western Mhorecia/North-central Mitharia: Central Mediaeval Europe Khirkovy: Russia (pre- or post-Mongol? - depends on number/type of infantry used) Indushara: Dark Ages/Mediaeval India Thon-sa: 'Stereotype' Tibet Gorthunda: 'Stereotype' Nomad (Hunnic is nearest, I think, though the yahgahn looks like a clone of the Turco-Mongol yataghan) Baghlan Plateau: Afghanistan The Ventati highlanders have some parallels with Caucasian tribes (their signature weapon looks like a rip-off of the Caucasian kindjal, for example). The Thûnese, aside from distinctly different climate and location, appear to be rip-offs of the Witchmen of Hyperborea from Lin Carter/L. Sprague de Camp's Conan pastiches. I was wondering how people deal with the likes of the Sirrenic Empire and the Vashkhorans. I use 10th-11th C. Byzantium as my model for the Sirrenic Empire, and a mixture of Sassanian and Achaemenid Persian (modified by the requirements of the faith of Hargesh) for the Empire of Vashkhor. As for the Vornakkians, Kumasians, etc. - suggestions welcome!

Re: A new look at shields The semi-cylindrical Roman shield with the single-handed grip was made of leather-covered plywood, so is not as heavy as you would think. The later oval ones made out of leather-covered solid planking had both hand- and arm- grip (I wonder why? ). There were Late Roman shields with the more solid construction and single-handed 'punch' grip, but they were rather smaller (about the size of a Viking shield) - usually issued to big hulking German Auxilia - or bucklers (issued to some cavalry and infantry skirmishers/archers). My favourites are the Ottoman Turkish 'siege shields' - about Viking shield size, but solid iron (oddly enough, they did NOT have a 'punch grip').

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers? I am running a Turakian Age campaign and am using the spell multipliers as listed. The players are happy, but that might be because they are ALL casters to some degree (apart from a vat-grown furry cat-woman [don't ask!] who has an inherent Power instead [in fact, one of the most useful - and cheap - non-combat Powers an adventurer can have: Regeneration, 1 BODY/Hour]). We have 2 priests (a Druid and a 'frothing' Valakar War Priest), 2 Warrior-wizard types (i.e. their spells are an afterthought and their skill level not high) and 2 casters whose non-spellcasting combat abilities are pretty marginal. They also have at least 5 DEF armour (on chest and head at least); so they are all at least reasonably well-armoured. The divisors allow the non-specialist (or those that are running out of points - the party were originally only 125pt characters) to buy their spells individually without worrying about Frameworks, and the RSR keeps things in check. Overall I rather like them - they can of course be used for min/maxing (even the FHG spells can be min/maxed by choosing the right versions of each spell), but the most notorious min/maxer in my group (ME ) designs all the characters (the player provides the concept first, of course) and is running the campaign so I restrain myself…

Re: A new look at shields Don't forget the joys of metal-faced shields; a thin layer was very handy for deflecting arrows and blows from heavier weapons that did not hit square-on. I cannot remember where I came across it, but I believe the adoption of the heater shield instead of the kite shiled alowed the shield to be thicker and possibly faced with a thin layers of metal (rather than just leather), while keeping the weight within manageable limits. There are quite a few pre-mediaeval examples of metal rims on shield, though not many with complete rims: The early Roman oval scutum (which pre-dates the semi-cylindrical one beloved of Hollywood) had metal edging on top and bottom, and it was usually bronze (to avoid corrosion - the shield was often grounded as it was not exactly light…). The Ancient Greek hoplon could be bronze-faced/rimmed (the Spartan ones come to mind…). For something really freaky try the Scythian ones made of wickerwork but with metal scale facing [poor versions used bone - often human - taken from their victims - to face the shield with instead]. As for dealing with shields in game terms, I just use the method mentioned in earlier posts (if the blow would have hit the character but for the shield's DCV bonus, then the blow hits the shield). I have also used a different house rule for when a character has in theory been hit but there is no way that the blow could land anywhere except on the shield - this can happen when fighting from behind cover, particluarly when using a large or tower shield. In this case I say that the attacker has hit the shield, but I allow him to do maximum possible damage rather than rolling it, thus allowing the possibility of the shield being totalled (the assumption is that a powerful blow has landed at a 90 degree [or close] angle of incidence to the shield, which is normally bad news for the shield and possibly the arm behind it)

Re: So yeah, about those Star Hero lasers.... One thing to watch with lasers; the wavelength of light used is critically important. Shorter-wavelength (higher-frequency) light can tranfer more nergy per unit area than longer-wavelength light, but unfortunately atmospheric composition can cause major dips in performance (Earth's atmosphere is much better at blocking many UV wavelengths than it is at blocking visible light, for instance; dust/smoke particles and water droplets will also be much better at blocking some wavelengths than others). This before taking into account any other factors such as atmospheric ionisation caused by weapons-grade lasers, or the many different characteristics of pulse, beam and rapid-pulse lasers (explanation of which gets very long, technical and tedious). [NOTE: Lasers are invisible in a particle-free VACUUM; weapon-quality laser (excluding blinding lasers) are very visible in atmosphere - usually only at the end of the collimator and where the target is hit. A 1970s vintage laboratory bench laser I saw generated a 1 Megawatt pulse which caused a large green-pink flash (caused by nitrogen + oxygen plasma) at the end of the collimator and also at the target - though this latter flash quickly changed colour as the steel plate of the target vapourised at the impact point. Also, there was a very significant 'thunderclap' resulting from all this ionisation.]

Re: A funny thing happened on the way to the Dungeon... Of course, if the Ceramites used bad language, that would make them potty mouths… Anyway, I think the players have enough on their plate… What's next - flying saucers? Imagine the story about a brave knight (Sir Lain) being outmatched by those things [it is of course the ballad of 'Poor Sir Lain' ]