Old Man

Armorsmith/weaponsmith skill should be fleshed out so that it's not as prone to abuse as the current weaponsmith skill. Too often have I seen players buy weaponsmith for their character and then claim they can crank out (effectively) magic items for everyone in the group. I'd like to see some kind of chart for what the penalties are wrt fixing and making various types of weapons and armor, and what kind of forge and tools and materials are required, and what level of weaponsmith should be required to build "superior" weapons, and how long it should take. There ought to be some readily available info on this subject since blacksmithing is still treated as a trade. Base weaponsmith should be enough to make crude knives, arrow/spear heads, and farming tools. It should be harder to make swords and mail, and harder still to make articulated plate armor that fits.

*gasp* I am stunned speachless at such a lack of common decency towards the faerie folk! How could you say such a thing! Sentiments like that are just...rude! _______________ I am the ELFLOVER

Speaking of armor, an armorer or armorsmith skill would be nice to see.

How can you say that you use armor on an activation and then turn around and say that hit locations would slow down combat? And, yes, hit locations do make combat more deadly, but probably not as much as you make out. "Lopped off limbs" and "facial wounds" are extraordinarily rare unless the player plays like an idiot. Conversely, there does exist the remote possibility that my character will be felled in one lucky hit, which goes a long way toward preventing boredom and complacency. I've had it happen, I think, four times in five years of playing.

Who'd have thought it would be so simple? How do you make the blobs do damage to those that step on them before they explode?

OK, stop right there. Go watch the movie. It's a classic that every fan of sci-fi should see.

Re: It has arrived! It's been over five hours now. Where's the review? I'm waiting.

Hit location is a must. With it you have sectional armor, and the enhanced roleplaying of having an impairing leg wound rather than X body of damage. Without it what you have is hit points, which I for one have had my fill of. The table will slow combat a bit at first but it'll quickly become second nature, especially when people learn the 2x BODY locations. It does make combat more lethal--if you have new players you might want to encourage them to play conservatively for a little while. But the way I see it, if there's no danger involved then the game is fucking boring. The adventures you remember most are the ones where somebody got killed. I'd dump the 5th ed armor and encumbrance rules and go with the sectional armor chart and encumbrance from 4th, if you can find it. It's a lot better balanced. 5th ed encumbrance is broken in that fighters with high strength suffer no penalty for walking around in impregnable suits of plate.

The DCV penalty used to be based purely on weight in 4th. I'd go back to that for game balance purposes even if it is less realistic. Otherwise, your 20 STR stud fighter type (an extremely common archetype in FH) skips around in full coverage 8 DEF tankmail with no DCV or DEX roll penalty at all, or a net +2 DCV should he elect to carry a large shield. I'm starting to wonder just how good the new FH is going to be. It seems as though Fred did all kinds of damage that would have to be superceded in order for FH 5th to be playable.

Sounds like a multipower to me...

How large of an area does extinguish cover? What are the special effects? Does the fire just die out or is there a sudden downpour of water? 1d6 EB splash of water, area effect, indirect 1d6 EB or 1 pip RKA oxygen removal, area effect, only to extinguish fires

Simple and easy to use but your players are never ever going to buy DEF 1 or DEF 2 armor if they can help it. What would be the point if they have to buy a new suit after every other turn of combat?

This is a good idea and translates over to your aDEF idea. Using the above example, if the door took 6 BODY then it would be reduced to 4 DEF / 6 BODY.

END for wearing armor is kind of covered in encumbrance. I think there should also be a guideline for other penalties while wearing armor. Like DCV penalties or skill use penalties. "You're going to Stealth behind the guard and knock him out...in your plate armor...um yeah."

I was playing Unreal Tournament the other day and I was wondering how to make the blob gun. It basically shoots out gobs of damaging goo and after a few seconds, the goo explodes.

I was so sure that's what I said before.... oh and misterdeath, buying 8 DVC levels only with Sweep is inefficient in your example

You must have a lot of players where you are. I'm jealous. Note that fleshing this system out would also help players who find themselves at the mercy of an abusive or idiotic GM. If GMs were perfect we wouldn't even need the rulebook, we'd all just sit around and listen to him talk. There's a point at which certain things need to be abstracted, true, but property damage is one area that comes up all the time, and as such it needs better treatment than "whatever the GM says".

I like the idea of doubling the BODY damage required to fully destroy something or create a breach. That makes a lot of sense. Here's another poorly thought out idea. What if some of the DEF was ablative based on the current BODY of the object? Call it aDEF for short. So any time you inflict 1 BODY on the thing, the aDEF goes down by 1 too. So if you have a stone wall that's 5 DEF + 3 aDEF, and 5 BODY, and you hit it for 10, inflicting 2 BODY, it's now at 5 DEF + 1 aDEF and 3 BODY. So once you cause some structural damage to the wall it's noticeably weaker. Now that I look at it it seems a little clunky, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

Rapid Attack just lets you make a Sweep as a 1/2 phase action instead of a full phase action. It doesn't do anything for the DCV penalty. I'd have to say that was a darn good question. The levels would get sort of halved - they round up. I think you should just go with 3 pt skill levels for a close group of attacks. Then allocate those as you need them for OCV or offset the DCV penalty.

For things like mega magic, have the player construct the spell outside of the normal MP or VPP. They just have to take 1 Charge (-2), Charges Never Recover(-2) in addition to any other limitations you might want. That brings the real cost down and since the points are gone forever, players will be reluctant to do it very often.

I've been having a...discussion with someone on the B5W mailing list. This is the latest message he sent out. It just boggled my mind. ---- I've observed the same thing in Champions games. Everybody buys regen, speed 5+, and Dex 23+. Just because a system is skill point based is no guarantee that the sameness is or can be avoided. Quite frankly we agree to disagree. >> I find this to be quite funny but since you don't >> take the Hero System seriously, then you wouldn't understand why. Heh, where did you get this? Hero has a fantastic framework, you just can't let the players buy anything other than perks, skills, and stats with normal maxes. Or you do what I'm considering and have people randomly generate their characteristics and allot them some skill points jettisoning the abusable parts for the valuable mechanics.

oops

Bravo. I too would pay extra for a hard cover with great art. Examples of equivelent armor types. Like Furs and Cloth Armor are Def 1; Leather Armor and Ratan are Def 2, etc.

Use Hero whichever Hero system Hero you Hero want. heheh Seriously, as long as you don't go the d20 route, you and your players will be happy. d20 is easier to learn but leaves that not-all-the-way-satisfied feeling in your gut. Especially when there is not a real difference at all between a stat at 8 and the same stat at 12.

Perhaps a given material should be defined as a ratio of DEF/BODY instead of just DEF. So we could define wood to be DEF 2/BODY 3 per inch of thickness, while granite would be DEF 5/BODY 2 per inch. Then a 4" thick door would be 8DEF/12 BODY if wood, and if granite, would be 20 DEF / 8 BODY. That simulates the relationship between hardness and brittleness a little better. The numbers are pretty high, but could be tweaked. Besides, for heroic level campaigns I think higher values are necessary. The numbers above aren't that far off, given that a normal human can do about 1.5d6K to a wooden door with an axe, and wouldn't have a chance of getting through the granite in anything like combat time, even with a pick doing 1d6+1K AP.