Old Man

The Hero 5th Beastiary has most of the important monsters in it.

For the most part, convert using the equivalents for stats. For BODY use the D&D character's CON.

Try going from there.

Yor invoked the strength of St. Sebastian leaping out of the pit to land behind the three startled Muskies. Spinning on one foot, the massive monk kicked one of the hairy creatures in the back throwing it into the pit.

Crashing branches announced the arrival of Chip Oblach, Disciple of The All Father. Roaring a battlecry, he too almost landed in the pit of spikes.

With a crumbling of dirt and rock, two Muskies emerged from the ground about 5 feet away from Aleister. Zin threw her last axe at one hitting it in the thigh. The Musky's eyes rolled back as it fell back into the hole it came from.

Aleister faced off against the other Badger-man. The two of them traded blows only for a short time. Aleister's old fencing lessons came back to him allowing him to strike a death blow with his sword.

Fighting off two Muskies was almost child's play for Yor but he couldn't get a solid hit through their combined defense. They in turn could not hit the huge, nimble man.

Leaping over the pit, Chip took a spear in the gut before he swung his mace into a Musky side. The other, shocked by his companion's sudden demise, allowed Yor the openning he was waiting for. Half a dozen punches to the Musky's hand and shoulder left the last of the Badger-men lying in the dirt.

DUDE! Where did you get your avatar?

I vaguely remember it from a video game but don'r remember which one.

I think you guys are going about it all the wrong way. Summon only requires END to summon the creature. Make the Summon cost END to maintain and when the character stops paying END, the creatures goes away.

Somebody at RPG.net brought up a good question...how would you do Kirby?

Crap nevermind, I just figured it out...VPP.

I didn't say anything about weapons. I was talking about unarmed attacks like Killing Strike.

Right, but if you buy +DC it increases the BASE damage of the attack. The max is x2 Base damage.

*semi- accurate account of events*

Zin clambered down from her roost and walked over to the beetle intent on retrieving her daggers. While examining the corpse, she found a glistening membrane protruding from the beetle's abdomen. Slicing through the thin skin caused four grapefruit sized spheres covered in slime to pour out. Apparently, the beetle was a female with eggs. The entertainer spent some time collecting s good portion of the beetle gore and packing up the eggs.

It didn't take long for the group to find the Musky trail again. Mac was once again scouting ahead. If not for the threat of blade beetles and Muskies, the walk would have been fairly pleasant.

Aleister whispered foul words and flicked his fingers in arcane patterns every quarter hour. Several of his attempts resulted in him muttering "hmm, nothing." But after a few hours, he said "Hold on, what's this?" A look of concentration came over the necromancer's features and he seemed to peer into the forest. "Mac, there's Muskies ahead about 150 yards away."

With Aleister guiding them, the rest of the group moved ahead cautiously. The had just entered a clear portion of the trail when half a dozen Musky barbs sailed into their midst - they were spotted.

Mac ran ahead as fast as his skinny legs could carry him. Yor was intent on outpacing him but his prayers fell on deaf ears. Zin, thinking defensively jumped into another tree. Aleister took up a guard position on the ground near her. Chip followed in the wake of Mac and Yor.

Loud barking alerted Macarrandir and Yor to the presence of Musky dogs just as the canines charged through the bushes at them. The first was taken down quickly by Yor and his mighty fists of holy might. The second was much luckier. Before Mac could block effectively, the pony sized beast clamped it's jaws on his shoulder. The tall man went limp from the pain and loss of flesh.

An unsettled spirit lifted the unconscious scout and placed him at the feet of Aleister. Zin caught a glipse of the Musky dog near Yor. Her sight was true but her arm failed her, instead of her dagger striking the dog, it sank into Yor's flank.

The dog looked at Yor with seeming intelligent eyes. The two circled each other waiting for the right moment to strike. As it was about to attack, the dog's focus on the monk was broken. Chip came crashing down the trail widly swinging his great mace. Yor took the oportunity to land a blow on the dog's stomach stunning it long enough for Chip to cave in it's chest with studded steel.

More Musky darts were thrown at the two dog slayers but none found their mark. The Muskies didn't follow their usual pattern of advancing. Instead of running forward, they faded back into the forest.

Yor was determined to catch them. With a holy shout he ran forward with the grace of god. His face broke into a grin as he charged. Within seconds the Muskies were before him. Within a footstep, he found himself falling into a spike lined pit. One of the sharpened wooden stakes pierced his leg but the injury wasn't great.

Moving his hands over Macarrandir's torn shoulder, Aleister siphoned up a bit of the Wythir's soul. Using this energy, he stopped the bleeding and brought the scout back from the brink of death. Chip ran after the Muskies but it would take a short time before he could reach them. Losing sight of her companions, Zin considered following them.

A warning hand by Aleister made Zin pause. "Something coming..." the necromancer peered behind him and started to feel a vibration from the ground.

Originally posted by Aroooo

I thought even in Heroic level games Martial damage bonuses were allowed to exceed the 2x weapon damage class rule. If its not allowed, then I guess its a (new) house rule 'cause that's what we've been doing in our Heroic games

 

Aroooo

It's not weapon killing attacks, it's martial killing attacks (killing strike) that have no cap.

Jeez, man, how long did it take you to type all that?

Conversely, you could stick with more overt magic (from whatever source) and egyptianize the special effects. Go rent The Mummy--lots of summoning of undead, RKAs in the form of scarab swarms, drains and transforms, sandstorms, and so forth.

It kind of depends on the setting and the special effects of the spells. If the campaign is always played in the forest or jungle, then there should be no limitation.

Originally posted by Steve

Whole Cloth or Evolotionary Creation?

 

I wonder, do most people create from whole cloth at the beginning or refine the concept over time like me? I've never been sure, since I have played with roughly equal numbers of both types of players.

I think it's mostly a matter of degree. I usually start with a pretty clear idea of what my character is and how he acts and why, but that's effectively designing in a vacuum. Once the campaign starts things change, mostly through interaction with the other PCs. For example, my misunderstood necromancer suddenly developed a kind of contempt for religious proselytizers, because there's one in the party and it's more interesting to play it that way.

There's no one site that I found, but regoogling for 'hindu yoga siddhis' gives

http://www.indiadivine.com/tattva12.htm

http://www.yogichen.org/chenian/bk29.html

http://www.yogichen.org/chenian/bk29.html

among others. The "Siddhis" are the mystical powers we're interested in. There's between five and thirty-some of these depending on which site you hit.

I'll usually start with a character concept first, and then flesh out the background after running it through kind of a survivability filter to make sure it'll last a little while. It's a process that goes back and forth a number of times, rather than just three or four steps.

For example, I recently had an urge to play a spellcaster, but something unusual, not the stereotypical wizard. I poked around on the net for ideas and came across the supernatural powers associated with Hindu mysticism and yoga. Perfect! I could whip up a style of magic based entirely on the character's mastery of his own body and mind. Defensive powers fit pretty easily into the framework--we've all seen these guys walk on hot coals and lie on beds of nails, etc. Offensively the magic would be weaker, since I couldn't see a way to justify any kind of spell other than clairvoyance with a range outside his own skin--so no RKAs, drains, or mind control. So he'd have to use strength aids and the like, and wade into combat like anyone else.

That's when I actually started to scribble things down and work out the points. As usual I didn't have enough, but he fell into place pretty quickly now that I had a clear picture of the concept: a highly flexible, hairless yogi who could do make his body do all kinds of weird stuff if you gave him a minute to meditate. In this case the background actually came last, as the concept didn't really lend itself to a lot of interesting history. As a result the disads gave me a hard time--those are the most background-driven portion of character creation.

For the melee reflection, I would go with an adjusted Missile Reflection also. The mechanics are already there and it's much more reasonable than Damage Shield.

Originally posted by Arthur

 

That seems to be the achilles heel of universal systems. GURPS has the same problem. Buying a DR of 10 for 30 points makes you practically invincible in a medieval setting, while the same DR 10 for the same cost is only pretty good in a modern military campaign.

There is a fairly easy way to correct this, which is easily compatible with Hero Designer: require a 'Difficulty' Advantage on certain Powers. For instance, Force Field may require a +1/2 Difficulty Advantage.

 

That works too, but to me altering the actual cost of the power is cleaner. Besides, I don't use Hero Designer.

The real solution is to construct adventures with less combat. The flying howitzer becomes less useful.

 

That's only part of the solution. Wizards can dominate non-combat campaigns just as easily, with telepathy, clairvoyance, desolid and invisibility.

The first approach just discourages all those neat little spells that add breadth to the character. The second is better, IMO, although I prefer Active Point caps. A Real Point cap encourages piling on the Lims.

I've found active point caps just don't work. All they do is encourage use of the cheaper powers at the expense of cooler but less cost-effective ones. I have no problem with piling on the lims as long as they're limiting lims--ritual magic is like that. In fact I encourage limitations because they are what sets a magic spell apart from a superhero power.

ECs have their drawbacks but they do put a stop to the one-spell howitzer.

Ah, but it's not Persistant, so it turns off when you go to sleep

Re: Is this the most abusive HERO character ever?

Originally posted by Yamo

Time Dude's one weakness would be that another SPD 12 character with DEX 40 or more (yeah, right...) could theoretically go first in combat and kill him with a single powerful attack before he can active his Time Freeze. The easiest way around this is simply to activate the Power long before entering into any combat situation.

Not the most abusive.

You cannot avoid the DEX 41 SPD 12 guy.

ex 1:

GM: You're walking down the street on routine patrol.

TD: I activate my Time Stop Power

GM: OK, everything stops. Now what?

ex 2:

GM: You're walking down the street on routine patrol.

TD: Anything goin on?

GM: Nothing happen until your second hour on the beat. You see a bright streak of light coming towards you. Phase 12..

Might even be worth putting Only vs BODY (-1/2). Good guys get stunned and knocked out all the time, but they rarely die outright.

Damage Reduction 25% PD / 25% ED (30)

nonpersistent (-1/4), luck based (-1/2) --> 17 real points. Penetrating still gets through, but I can live with that.

I've seen these problems before. There's two root causes: first, some powers are just not costed correctly for the fantasy genre, in particular flight and force field, as well as most other movement powers. Second, there's no mechanic in the 'stock' FH magic system to prevent mages from allocating a huge number of points to one attack spell. So to an extent the system encourages floating howitzers like the example here.

My solution to the second problem would be to either force spells to be bought in an EC, or impose a tight real point limit per spell--maybe INT/3 or somesuch. I don't see a way around the first problem without changing some of the power costs. FF ought to cost 5/2, flight should be 5/1", and leaping should be 3 or 4/1".

A couple more comments on the 22 point RKA example. 1.5 in limitations is nothing; if that's all the player has they're not trying very hard. It's fairly easy to get up to -3 in lims on any spell. And I hope that mage isn't flinging his 3d6RKA anywhere near his buddies with an OCV of just 5.

Originally posted by Markdoc

Hey Shadowpup,

 

tell us what the problems are - there may be ways to solve them.

 

cheers, Mark

Actually my problem stems more from my being very casual about magic. The only restrictions that I have are: must have KS: "Spell Casting", Active Points limit based on 2x INT or 2x EGO (whichever is higher) and "spells" be in a multipower. Multipowers are good because it allows a spell caster to have more than a couple spells - variety is a good thing.

I don't require limitations of any kind for two reasons. The first is that the "spells" can represent things that aren't exactly spells - a monk's faith or training powers, a sword master's sword tricks, etc. The second is that some spells just don't need all the arm waving, chanting, incense burning, mumbo jumbo. Not even in D&D which is famous for such things do all spells have the same limitations. I can see RSR but other than that, I can't logically tack on the others.

Actually all of that isn't that bad. It's just that some powers are very cheap for the genre. I'll admit to being too lazy to go through the entire Powers list to modify costs.

So you're more in favor of the Damage Reduction, Non-Persistant, Based On Luck route?

That kind of makes sense...

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

Yeah but you are the Old Man of hero.

What are Aeons to you?

Moments past are as aeons to me, while aeons yet to come flash by in a heartbeat.

Why? I can barely remember what day it is or what I did at work yesterday. Conversely, bills and deadlines rush up on me with breathtaking speed. If this trend continues, in a couple of weeks I'm gonna wake up and I'll be ninety years old and I'll be like, "what? Hey, wait--" and then I'll die.