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The Critical Hit optional rules say hello.

It wasnt intended to be that way by the original author, but the focus on very powerful signature characters who were often near god-like gave people that impression. The actual meat and potatos of the setting itself is fairly reasonable.

Yep. My wife is going to flip when she hears about Karl Urban being included. Between Urban and Hiddleston, my wife is going to fangirl herself into a coma.

I rented it from Redbox. I regretted not seeing it on the big screen. I did not regret paying only $1.50 to see it.

I'm excited for Ragnarok. I think I'm one of the only ones who really like the Thor films.

Only so you can join us in bashing it mercilessly.

I disagree that the writing was solid. The basic stories in both Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice were a hot mess. Certainly the lack of basic understanding of the main characters is obvious and problematic, but that alone wont ruin a movie. Snyders action direction and visual abilities saved Man of Steel in my opinion, making it not only watchable but entertaining. Its not a very good Superman film, but its a great Superhero film in terms of visuals and action. Bat v Supe was such a mess, not even Snyder's visual stylings could save it. It was disjointed (trying to do too much, editing out large chunks of the story to cut down the time) characters motivations were nonsensical. And characters simply were not well developed. That screams writing issues to me.

I enjoy the Essence Flow concept as well. When I was setting up my campaign, I had to decide exactly how I was going to model the flows and foci since they are an essential element of the Shadow World setting. Ultimately I decided to model the Flows themselves as a Recovery to Essence pools. The size of the Flow determining how much Recovery. If you tap a Flow, its Rec score augments your own, though while personal Essence Recovery is on an hourly basis, Essence Flow Recovery is available per minute. Thus one can refill their own personal stores very quickly. A minor Flow has a Recovery between 5 and 10 points per minute. A major Flow has a Rec between 10 and 20. Some larger flows are possible which can have a Recovery as high as 50, but these are rare. A Foci is where multiple Flows intersect and this convergence of Flows creates a pool of Essence that can be tapped and utilized as an End Reserve. A minor Foci might have between 50 and 100 Essence available. A major Foci could have 100 or more Essence in the pool. 500 Essence in such a pool is not unheard of. A Key Foci is one of the essential Chakra points of the world and can hold as many as 1000 Essence in the pool. Wars are often fought over the possession of a Key Foci and damage to such a Foci can have devastating consequences felt across the entire world.

Or you could spend 30 points for 3 Overall skill levels and gain everything except the points toward Speed. You can get to 6 0CV or 6 DCV (not at the same time though and that is a weakness compared to raw Dex) and instead of +2 to your Dex skills, you have +3 to ALL skills including general skills and Knowledge skills, all Int skills, all interaction skills, breakout rolls, perception rolls and can be used to increase damage class in combat as well. I'll take that!

In a skill-centric game, you dont need to boost your characteristics. There are other ways of getting there. In my last Fantasy Hero game, there was one character with a Dex of 18 and she was an agile, acrobatic type fighter. The party theif had a Dex of 15 and opted for Skill Levels instead of more Dex. The party mage had a Dex of 12 and also opted for Combat Skill levels to make up the difference. The players put points into skills instead of raw characteristics. They still performed very competently. Exceedingly so in some cases. (The theif character eventually turned his Skill Levels into Overall Skill Levels and became good at EVERYTHING) If the players are confident that the NPCs they encounter wont routinely surpass them, they wont feel a need to inflate their characteristics. They'll place them where they think it will help them perform. And if you focus the game on skill use, players will put points into skill levels and directly into thos skills that prove most useful during play. Thats why the theif player in my campaign bought overall skill levels. He found that he was using nearly all the skills on his sheet on a regular basis and he found it easier just to put in the 10 points for the overall than increasing Dex and INT and PRE to cover them all.

Damn 6e keeps changing builds.

The shields out of the Fantasy Hero book are CSLs on a Focus. That is the build I was referring to.

I have always played that the phase in which you use the shield to block, you lose its DCV bonus. The bonus from a shield is Combat Skill Levels on a focus. CSLs can only be used in one way from phase to phase.

I would play that in a hearbeat.

I agree, but it aint gonna happen. Too many people are introduced to Hero via Champions. Hero has been a generic game for over 20 years at this point, yet people still assume Hero = Champions unless you specifically say otherwise.

Extended skill rolls. Difficulty is based on the active points of the object. Very powerful items with lots of different effects can be very difficult to successfully enchant. Collecting the proper materials and making adjustments in an attempt to lower the difficulty. Possibly a ritual for a very powerful item. Determine base time to create and enchant object. Time can be shortened or extended which affects difficulty.

The Target number would be the Body of the object being blessed. A sword might be 5 Body (requiring a roll of 10 or more on the Transform dice). A cup only 1 Body, but blessing a whole house might be 20 Body (i would base it on the highest body wall in the place) and might be beyond the capacity for the priest to bless. Or multiple priests could do a ritual and combine their efforts to bless larger areas.

If all this does is add a "blessed" or "Holy" sfx to a weapon or item which allows it to take advantage of vulnerabilities and susceptabilities, then I would allow a minor Transform to do that.

My perspective on CV is probably a little different from some. I still play 5th edition, so I used derived CV. This means the characters in my games will have a natural CV, then they will have a total CV from Skill levels and Martial arts etc. I encourage my players to purchase both where it makes sense for the character. So in general "natural" CV will hover between 5 and 7, CSLs can apply....at least +2 was common in many of my games...then maneuver bonuses (and penalties) will apply situationally, so CV tended to end up around the 7-10 range. I like the characters in my games to be human, but highly skilled combatants. It makes for fast and deadly battles at times because the characters have the CV to take on many foes, but characters dont have the raw characteristics to stand up to more than a few blows before being taken out. It creates a dynamic where DCV is of the utmost consideration and defensive maneuvers are invoked often.

Outside, no. Near the top end, yes. I am firmly stuck between the 4th and 5th editions of the game so my assumptions and prejudices stem from there. I adhere closely to NCM for genres where the characters are supposed to be human, even if they can be augmented via magic or technology or superscience. You dont see a lot of human characters in my Fantasy games with characteristics above 20. Certain characters might have one defining characteristic that sits between 21 and 25, but that will be about it. I have no issue with characteristics getting a boost from magic....its part of the genre after all...but that wont be their natural characteristic. I tend to encourage the development od skills over the inflation of characteristics. This is because I have always approached Hero from the perspective of mostly down to earth heroic level gameplay as opposed to the default assumption of very powerful superheroes.

Yeah. I see you guys are still talking in terms of superheroes, even on the Fantasy Hero forums (23 Dex average, or average CV 8). Supers are not my baseline. Thats why a lot of my opinions on characteristics are very different from the majority.

My perception of a "normal" having a baseline of 10 probably comes from the fact that I started with the 4th edition.

on Spell Adders and Power Point Multilpliers RM has two interesting concepts that help magic users. The first is called a Spell Adder. It is an item that is enchanted to allow a magic user a free use of one of her spells without needing to use Essence. (Power points in RM) This can be extremely strategic because an adder can be used to cast a powerful spell when the character is low on juice. In RM adders are rated by how many "free spells" it allows per day. It is assumed that once the magic user gets a good nights rest, all adders the magic user has refresh. In Hero these are written up as Naked Advantage 0 End with the limitation Charges applied. The charges refresh daily. Each specific Adder is tuned to a specific Realm of magic. However, Arcane Adders can be used by any Realm. Also some Hybrid Realm adders can only be used by specific professions which match the proper Realms. Power Point Multipliers are exactly as they sound....magic items which multiply the number of points a magic user has to cast spells with. They are rated from x2 to x10 (or higher in some very rare cases). Thus a mage with 50 power points normally but with a x10 multiplier, he would have 500 points to play with. Hero doesnt exactly work this way. What I do is translate PP multipliers as Endurance reserves which can be used for powering spells. Each x1 is 10 Essence/Endurance in the pool. In general I have the Recovery be 1/10 of the full pool which recovers per hour. Like Adders, Essence multipliers are usually limited by Realm and sometimes, specific professions.

It was in the original 5th edition. The average person is rated at all 8s. If I remember right, back in the 4th edition that was considered the incompetent normal. I no longer have my old 4th edition books to check.

I'm going to agree with you here. I consider STR 10 the average for a male. I consider STR 7 the average for a female. I was being sexist and not considering females into the equation. But thats only regarding strength. All other characteristics being pretty close. I still contend that the average range is 8-12 and that most healthy adults should fall between that range (slightly less in strength for females)