Kaze9999

The mechanics of setting up and running a low magic world are not that hard.  It sounds like you were headed down the right path IMO.

My last campaign was a low magic world as well.  I think there are two things that really define a low magic campaign.

 

The first is how powerful magic is compared to the mundane approaches to deal with things.  A low magic world the "sword" will be more powerful than a spell.  Especially at the beginning of the campaign.  Here is a link to a description of how magic worked in that campaign and the specific schools of magic. 

 

The second aspect is the frequency of magic being used in the campaign.  For instance I can't imagine there would be very many, if any magic items in the game.  In my game the players didn't find any magic items until the last 6 sessions of the campaign (that was after two years of playing).  Also people who use magic should be very rare.  Most of the opposition won't have magical abilities.

 

The harder part is making sure your players are prepared to play in that kind of world. 

 

In the above game one player was a sorcerer (mental magic) and because of the nature of magic in the world he had to be very careful about using his magic - both from a meta-gaming POV and a campaign setting POV.  He actually had a secondary set of skills as a bounty hunter.  Another character was a reluctant priestess who eventually got divine powers (reluctantly at that). 

 

The PCs knew they were facing a big time mage and his apprentices but that person used his mundane allies to deal with the players for as long as possible. We probably played for six months before they ran into someone who could directly use magic against them.

 

You really have to bring your players along.  Weaning them off of D&D style magic might be really hard. 

Really good point, being that "Low Magic" should mean, "Magic is scarce, period." and not, "Magic is scarce for the PC's...but not for their enemies!" 

I'd tend to give them a low amount of points to begin with, and then lay out story-based reasons for limiting magic based on the world, like for example having magic only be available from specific teachers, who require a lot of learning before you 'get to the good stuff' (i.e. required package deal which mandates buying other, 'related' skills like KS: Herbalism and Survival Skill and Paramedics and such for Healing magic, or Forensic Medicine Skill and KS: Anatomy for Necromancy, etc).

Also, if necessary, for some groups I will flat out say they have to use pre-generated spells from the Fantasy Hero and or Grimoire books and 'express themselves' in the execution and tactics more than the design phase of their magic.

Speaking of tactics...none of the other players helped to cut the poor guy loose from the Entanglement for the whole fight?

Page 38:

1. Reduced penetration makes the power less usefull agaisnt defenses. If I remember right you split the attack into two equal dicepools, roll each, apply full defenses agaisnt each but add the damage after defenses togehter (for figuring out if the target was stunend and wound tracking). Alternatively just doubling the defenses might work too.

 

Two handed means you need two hands to use that weapon to full effect. So you cannot use a shield or dual wield the weapon or otherwise use only one hand without penalty. You can always choose to use more or less hands then is required, but that affects STR minimum:

One handed weapons used with two hands decreases STR minumum by 3.

If you one hand wield a weapon wich requries 1.5 Hands, STR minimum increaes by 2 or you get -1 OCV (for weapons not adding damage from STR, like Guns)

If you one hand wield a two handed weapon, STR minimum increaes by 3 or you get -2 OCV (for weapons not adding damage from STR)

 

2. When you add Retorcognition you can look in the past. But you still can look into the Present. If you add "Retrocog only", you can never look into places in the present, only place in the past or future (respectively).

No range means it counts as HTH-Attack, if it normalyl would count as Ranged attack. And HTH attacks do not require skin contact - a sword is about as good against a naked person as agaisnt someone wearing a fullbody catsuit with no armor protection.

Requires Skin contact is means that it would work a lot better againt the naked person and not at all against the one in catsuite. (you propably need some very good aimed attack to hit a vulnerable hit location).

 

3. Fast Draw does not need a roll to ready your weapon fast. It does require a Roll to change Clips fast.

Also in case that two held action collide, Fast Draw can be used instead of DEX to resolve the question of "who acts first?"

It's also being used in some "Showdown" resolution approaches. Usually Fast Draw get's some minor bonus (so someone with Fast Draw is slightly better then one with just a high DEX but without the skill)

 

4. Weaponsmith is a special class of Skill, called "limited Categories skill" (other skills like this are Forgery, Gamling, Navigation and Survival)

Thier price Structure is: 2 Points for a Characteristics roll and access to one Category*. 1 CP for any extra Category, 2 CP for every +1 to the roll with All Categories you bought.

To be able to make 3 different kinds of weapons (say Muscle Powered HTH, Muscle Powered Ranged and Firearms), one needs:

2 Points for Characteristics level roll and one Category. 2 Points for the other two Categories.

 

*Basically you get one category for free.

 

The GM can waive the need to buy Categories (you just buy Weaponsmith as 3 point Skill and get all cateogires) or expand it to otehr skills (like Computer Programming being categorised by Operatign Systems. Or species specific Technology), if he thinks it fits the campaign.

 

 

Page 244:

1. Damage Shield is a special case of Area of Effect. Most often used to simulate damaging auras. Anyone who hits the user in unarmed HTH or is hit by the user in unarmed HTH takes the effects. It applies to targets being grabbed or grabbing the user once per Phase. It affects Entangles used on the user. Attacks made with Stretching (including weapon Reach) still suffer the effects of Damage shields It affects attackers if the attack is blocked. It does not offer any defense (other then make this a bad person to attack in melee).

Melee Weapons (improvised or otherwise) take the damage instead of the weapon user. Unbreakable Foci are affected normally (wich means usually not at all, because they are immune to damage).

If a attack is Melee range but should not be subject to damage shields (i.e. indestructible arm), it should take "limited Range (HTH-reach)".

It was ocasionally applied to weapons (wielding a flamesword Warhamemr Power weapon, a lightsaber) to simulate those weapons "damaging other weapons it touches" (since blocking applies the damage to teh attacker).

 

2. Resurrection is an adder applied to the Healing or Regeneration Powers. There should be at least on condition to cancel outthe resurrection (a special form of burrial or a specific damage dealing damage).

 

3. +1 Overall means "overall Skill Levels". These are 12 Point Skill that can work as either a CSL or a SKill Level, but only one of those. The also may apply to certain other Roll (like Contact avalibility), at GM option.

 

Page 248:

Sounds like he has Desolidification. Characters with Desolidifciation are unable to affect the Physical World and are in turn able to pass through obstacles and cannot be affected (except for at least one Special Effect, Mental Powers and some Flashes and everythign build with "Affected Desoldified").

The one except is a very expensive Advantage called "Affects Solid World (+2)" wich allows a Character to use that ability even when Desolidifed. In this case he can use up to 25 STR while he is Desolid. He cannot use this STR to wield weapons - unless they are build with "Affects Desolid" too - but otherwise can do anything one can do with that much STR while still being protected by Desolid.

 

Page 254:

The same problem as above. In order to suck bloood, they apparently need a unprotected neck. Even a Dress or other clothing that Covers the Neck would prevent them from doing so - they have fangs, but not that long ones.

 

 

Re. Skin Contact Required:

Some people use Attack vs Alternate Defense (NDD; Skin Contact Required) isntead to model this. It's a no-cost thing for Power working against Power Defense, Flash Defense or similary "rare" defenses already, but for most others it is an advantage.

And...yes, all of that is explained in the two core books (which can be got at the following store links, and the "damaged cover" books are a great deal, because the damage is very minimal, usually practically invisible):

And I am so sad to hear about the glaring omissions! I am a huge fan of both Hero System and Monster Hunter International, and love the MHI book and have been using it, but never noticed the missing rules because I've played Hero System for thirty years and never tried to look them up in the MHI book!

Sorry for any defensiveness you got at first; we long time Hero System fans often see the game bashed as overly complex, when in fact, after you get through the character creation process, there are generally fewer rules to remember in game play than in most versions of D&D!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT3C2kdMHOs

Sorry, Steampunk, not pulp. I'll re-post int 'other' topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT3C2kdMHOs

Challenge made!

From the roll20.net community forum posts:

Thank you, Rigel!

Great book! Collects and updates creature write up from just about all the different 5th edition Hero System books and does great conversions and updates to 6th edition. I like to get my books in PDF, and some of the 5th edition books that this gathers creatures from were not available in PDF at all. Great value; good, detailed write-ups, nice illustrations, and good coverage of multiple genres as well as extra rules for custom hit locations and how to use for different genres.

Has anyone used this (Acquitaine) as a stand alone campaign setting without Tuala Morn? How's it stand on its own? Are there many references in it to other products? Does it refer primarily to 6e products, or does it lean on Tuala Morn (5e)?

It really depends on the specific flavor of fantasy you want to run.

I depend heavily on Hero Designer and the Equipment guide and Hero Designer pack for the Equipment guide, and the Bestiary and pack and Grimoire and pack too, but in a pinch, I could run a whole campaign just using the Monster Hunter International book and designer pack.

If you buy sourcebooks with pre-made and statted (in Hero Designer character packs) monsters, equipment, spells, etc. than Hero System is actually easier to play with fewer rules and exceptions to remember than most versions of D&D! It's having to build everything yourself that adds most of the complexity and most of the pages to the rule books.

The best part of Hero System is that you can do anything...and the most intimidating part is that you can do anything if you build it yourself. It helps a lot to have a specific vision of what you want to do.

Yes! More Kazei 5! My favorite 6e setting!

Must be inventorying the warehouse!

Looks like the last one got nabbed. You snooze you lose

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!!!

Nah, WOD has books just as big or bigger than the individual 6e Hero System books for POD on DriveThruRPG...

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/112871/Werewolf-The-Apocalypse-20th-Anniversary-Edition?manufacturers_id=1

http://www.flick.com/~chrisber/Academy/franklin.html

I'm sure everyone has noticed the slowdown on this site due to members leaving for various reasons (primarily due to the many technical issues that Dan had to overcome to get the site stable again). 

 

Now that the site is working better than ever we as fans need to let the world know that this forum is back.  That is, if we want to find NEW fans to discuss all things Hero with.

 

In the past few months I have joined several other sites with essentially the same forum name (Hyper-Man or HyperMan) and have tried to make positive Hero/Champions posts wherever possible.

 

Popular (multi-system) forums I now belong to:

therpgsite.com

forum.rpg.net

enworld.org/forum

 

I even created fan groups on the last 2.

 

Does anyone else here also participate and promote Hero System/Champions on other established forums?

 

HM

I talk up Hero System whenever I get the chance, but honestly the forum was always my source for company information, and it seems to me that has slowed down as well, presumably not because of technical issues; we were getting a weekly news update from Jason for a while...I miss that.

"Why Don't You Do Right?" by Carolina Chocolate Drops

http://www.thegrommet.com/landing/ev?utm_source=ev&utm_medium=CPA&utm_campaign=Sub&subid=ev.73567  

I havent looked at the 6th edition beastiary extensively, but i highly doubt it has all the creatures from the standard beasiary, both asian beastiaries, mmm and all the variations from the book of dragons in it. With fully fleshed out writeps for hero the way they're done lately, the book would be impossibly huge.

 

I could be wrong though. i should look to be sure.

The Asian Bestiary, Vol. I - PDF Pages 144

 

The Asian Bestiary, Vol. II - PDF Pages 144

 

HERO System Bestiary (5e) Pages 231

 

HERO System Bestiary (6e) Pages 498

 

Yeah, you should definitely check it out, just by page count you can see how much bigger the 6e Bestiary is, and when you factor out the text that wasn't just monster write-ups, you'll find that it has the monster write-ups from a whole bunch of different 5e books, including the monster write up sections from some setting books too!

Monsters, Minions and Marauders from the 5th edition has quite a few beasties that aren't in the Beastiary.

 

There was also a Book of Dragons released for the 5th edition that is very, very good for representing powerful, magical, dragons and every variation you could think of.  It's invaluable for campaigns that intend to use dragons in some form or fashion.

 

Other than that, just check out other sites and make your own.

Asian Beastiary volume 1 and Volume 2, and Book of Dragons here:

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/store/category/14-fantasy-hero/

Aren't all of these in the single, 6e Bestiary now?

Also, I like the monster write ups in (6e) Monster Hunter International for my Fantasy Hero settings, even though they are 'modern'; it is easy to use them for other time periods.

I've generally used settings by version, and right now I've moved to 6e first because I was thrilled at that 6e books (Hero System Equipment Guide, Hero System Bestiary, Grimoire, etc) gathered together all the content from a bunch of different 5th edition books, and then I found that I liked the mechanics better too.

So, I currently use The Day After Ragnarok , Kazei 5, Monster Hunter International, and The Widening Gyre for setting information, and I have only retained 5e content from two products from previous version, converting Valdorian Age and Hudson City because I like them so much,  they are worth it to me.

http://www.patreon.com/discover

Could always adopt the old Dark-Sun methodology... you roll up two separate characters and the backup earns the same XP as the first - because the odds of character death if not TPK increase exponentially over time.

I really want players to only have one character at a time, so while they could make up their "next character", I wouldn't look at it until they needed it; that said, I'll roll over XP to new (replacement) characters. 

Web comics, you say? How about Axe Cop Hero?

Wow...had...not seen that before.

 

Translating that property to a RPG is still a gamble, though. No telling if the readership fanbase will migrate to a gaming fanbase, or will expand from that specific setting to other products by the same publisher or using the same system.

 

PS238 is a popular web comic, after all. Since I'm not privy to the success of the OOTS and SM games post-Kickstarter, I can't speak to the viability of those particular franchises. But in the end, game publishing is still half alchemy. Don't get me wrong, I believe it would be worth trying to get another popular license; but IMHO it would be premature to have visions of the legions of fans of a particular property automatically buying a game based on it.

This is exactly why I think it has to be a Kickstarter...if the fans are willing to in effect pre-order the RPG by funding the Kickstarter (and the author is willing to really invest in getting the fans out there to support it), then you know you have a license that might be really worth the shot!

From what I saw, PS238 was always more of a print medium first though; the physical comic books came first, and the web site was careful not to put up any strips until well after they had been published in print. I suspect that a majority of its fans never even knew about the RPG!

In fact, I never saw any mention of the RPG on the author's web site, though I could have missed it. My impression was that the PS238 licensed product was basically trying to outreach to Hero System fans and kids of Hero System fans rather than tap into the existing PS238 fan base.