Inu

Re: FRPG Ideas from D&D that ain't necessarily so And of course, even if you have access to knowledge: religion thanks to your class, you don't HAVE to put points into it. ^_- A good point about multiclassing, though. A lot of people have a wrong impression about multiclassing, probably brought on by the mentality of 'character class = personality' which is... not really true. It's not even really supported by the PHB, although it doesn't go to great lengths to dispel it. Then again, they DID go to great lengths to dispel old assumptions about alignment, and that basically failed to come off. Even their own writers didn't read chapter 6 of the PHB. But yeah, a cleric who multiclasses into barbarian is not seen by the world as a 'barbarian who is also a cleric'. He's a 'barbarian priest', or a 'priest from the wilderness'. I had one who was a travelling priest who went all around the countryside, slept rough, and was kinda big and burly to begin with. So he had a level of barbarian as well as all his cleric levels (and the travel and community domains). A lot of it is just about shedding preconceptions and going with what works.

Re: Weapon Familiarity and Reality I've always felt that uncommon weapons simply get prohibitively expensive... and they seem to violate the general Hero tenet that you don't pay for how difficult something is you learn, you pay for how useful it is in-game (hence, immortality is 3 ponts). Is proficiency in the three-section staff really so powerful than it has to be bought individually, while swords and axes and maces and daggers and all that get rolled into one neat 2-point package? I just don't see balance concerns in making that cheaper. =)

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads Or to redirect the heat without using any excess energy. You could make a heat laser powered by the waste heat from your engines! Yeah!

Re: Rail gun damage?

Re: Weapon Familiarity and Reality The way i've usually interpreted this is to take things a bit more loosely and say that normally, when you roll to hit, you're looking for an opening in their defence. That opportunity might come anyway -- they might be concentrating their defence high, so you can hit their legs. The random roll for location determines where that opening presented itself more than anything else. If you do a called shot, you're trying to power through their defences where there is no opening, hence even going for the chest demands a penalty. Probably not strictly accurate, but it's good enough for me. Just need a somewhat more abstract take on combat than is normally had for Hero.

Re: Weapon Familiarity and Reality With some, it's even worse. Someone who has no idea how to use a flail will likely be more dangerous to themselves or their friends than the enemy. Can always feel free to introduce a variable penalty based on how familiar the weapon is!

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads That said, his inclusion was quite enlightening about various elements of Culture physiology and society. THAT was interesting.

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads Ian M. Banks' Culture books are very, very, very high-powered SF. In many ways, the Culture is a hard take on the Federation from Star Trek -- there are no issues of supply, because there's simply enough power to create anything people could possibly want. The cost of sending ships around the galaxy (or even to other galaxies) doesn't come into the equation at all. If people are willing to go (and the ship is willing, since it's governed by an AI with full citizenship), then it can go! The science isn't exactly hard, but what he HAS done is think through the repercussions of having access to particular technologies (which is why I say it's a take on the Federation; the technologies possessed by the Culture are very similar to the Federation, but the followthrough is greater). So it's... rigid sci-fi?

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads Rather, it does make for rather epic space battles -- just in a very different way. The emphasis is placed on the buildup, not the shooting. Getting the forces in position, figuring out what the enemy is doing... in my opinion, it's all very epic. Just not space opera epic. ^_- But that's semantics, I admit. I find his space combat quite riveting, and refreshing in its lack of focus on shooting. Sort of a corollary of Burnside's law: since we find humans more interesting than computers, the action will tend to focus on where the humans are. (But then you get Excession where over half the book focussed on the artificial intelligences controling the ships. =) The humans were secondary characters at best, and frankly, I didn't really like most of them, preferring to read about the ships!)

Re: Order of the Stick Hm, prolly tied highest, then. ^_-

Re: Order of the Stick There is a spell that can preserve corpses, keeping them fresh for purposes of raising (since it's much easier to raise an intact corpse, and less smelly). But another possiblities ties in with Belkar's absence. We do, after all, know what his highest skill total is in.

Re: FRPG Ideas from Hero that ain't necessarily so An immortality spell is an apprentice-level cantrip. =D

Re: FRPG Ideas from Hero that ain't necessarily so And everyone seems to forget that it ignored defences of Morgoth's creatures. It was one of the few weapons in the world capable of wounding Shelob. It was even extra-effective against orcs.

Re: FRPG Ideas from Hero that ain't necessarily so That seems to be true of real life. Well, inasmuch as when we lose something, we don't get something else in return. ^_- I don't think many people other than Steve have duplicates.

Re: FRPG Ideas from Hero that ain't necessarily so It costs fewer points, but that doesn't make it easier. ^_- As regards the king perk: it's cheap to be the king. To be an effective king costs more than 150 points worth of contacts, allies, retainers, wealth, bases, etc. A 10-point 'king' merit is almost more a Disad than a Perk... or at the very least, it'll come with a whole scad of 'Hunted: More powerful, NCI, 14-, intends to dethrone and imprison/kill'. Some perks ain't quite so cheap as they seem to be.

Re: Order of the Stick Slight quibble: Lawful characters follow a well-defined code of conduct, which may or may not have any resemblance to local laws. If they live in Town Of Evil, they may well be ferocious law-breakers. That's pretty clear in the books; lawful vs chaotic are about internal rules and codes, an ordered ethical existance, not about following externally-derived laws. This doesn't stop WotC making that very same mistake over and over again in various supplements, which furthers confusion among the fan-base (considering that this was the major change in alignment from previous editions).

Re: D&D vs. FantasyHERO vs. Palladium

Re: D&D vs. FantasyHERO vs. Palladium

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads ICBMs also tend to launch multiple warheads, not just one.

Re: Panspermia, anyone?

Re: Order of the Stick They have names, they ain't takin' no stinkin' NPC classes. ^_-

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: Panspermia, anyone? And for the universe, we give you... interstellar bukkake. Enjoy.

Re: Malloy Syndrome I thought Superman was the inspiration for Unbreakable?

Re: Assassin's Creed: Altair Okay, fair enough. =) I still consider something like that a story (IE, best revealed in context of the game, not outside it), but I do realise that I'm more touchy about spoilers than most people, and that it's not reasonable for me to expect to be protected from things revealed in the opening moments. ^_- No foul.