Manic Typist

What style of low fantasy campaign would you like to run, and what about the recommended point levels do you feel are too high? In 6E I feel it would be fairly easy to make 200-250 pt low fantasy characters who are still quite capable -both off and on the field of battle.

And by 10th level, all the fighters know obscure languages that only really make sense for the wizard to know... As opposed to HERO, where you actually have to explain how your character is growing instead of gaining arbitrary points.

Well, the POD is meant only for one creature to my knowledge - though I'm not an expert on EVE lore, I'd never heard of any crew going on the pod. Just the captain. If it will be able to hold multiple people then it should definitely be a vehicle.

Sabotage. Picking one wrong door, as indicated by the presence of tracks, would be forgetfulness. Doing 3+ doors...

Well, you could always just use Disarm/Grab with a SFX of teleportation...

Oh, that complicates interstellar travel nicely with respect to commerce/major travel hubs. If FTL travel is fairly easy, with significant commerce/passenger traffic, then you could conceivably notice a strain on stars at popular hubs. It could be as simple as regulating traffic in such a way so as to "balance" energy levels between stars... to all out war to prevent someone else's desire for trade from blowing up your home system through rush hour traffic conditions in your system.

I like it. How about a giant, spider-like construct whose legs are made out of street lights? Instead of spitting webs it spits manhole covers as a ranged projectile?

No answers from me, but thoughts/questions: 1) When you say it's a "Road Trip," will the group mostly be sticking near well trodden paths/known roads? Because the PC could then have a wagon - lab on wheels, rolling plot hook on wheels too. 2) When the she says she wants flexibility, you've detailed some of it but... have you asked her "Do you want to be like MacGyver with alchemy? Able to whip up something that's more than a little amazing with scant resources and little time?

I'd suggest Armor, personally. It doesn't allow the PC to move around inside of it like a vehicle, doesn't have weapons systems, etc. So, Life Support, some Movement Powers, rPD/rED, some Senses (to act as sensors), and then a bunch of pluses to various rolls related to the ship in which it is installed. Does the PC ever plan on being outside it? Gotta be careful that they're not trying to make their PC the ship without properly accounting for it pointwise.

Realized I never answered people's questions about what books I draw upon for inspiration. The Black Company series The Malazan series Codex Alera series

Since I don't know if the PCs would use it against significant NPCs, and I make no promises that I wouldn't use it against PCs... I think the best approach is to go with a Linked Power- an RKA:AVAD plus a Major Transform. This models the initial harm that comes from having a tumor suddenly grow in your lung from the size of a single cell to 4 inches in the space of 5 seconds, plus modeling the long term impacts to your health should you not receive help in reverse. Good call on reducing the value of the Limitation. Thanks all!

(Note: I'm not talking about using the Power: Healing as a weapon/attack, but rather using the sfx: healing). As I'm worldbuilding, I'm struck by images/scenes that serve to inspire the next bit that I want to flesh out. One example that I'm mulling over has to deal with "wild mages" in my setting - people who can tap directly into the elemental flows of magic itself, with each flow having a different direction/inclination. In this case, I'm thinking of how someone could use Life-magic as a deadly blast. Life magic is naturally inclined to be useful to healing- proper wizards use Life magic in conjunction with other flows to craft powerful healing spells, but even by itself a wild mage using Life magic should be able to help the body fight off disease/fever, close wounds, etc. It functions by giving energy to the body to engage in its natural processes; it promotes the immune system, the growth of cells, etc. Of course if a bone isn't set properly before you pour Life magic into a person, they'll probably heal in a way that could have been avoided if you'd set the bone and let them heal naturally. Alternatively, if the Life mage is careless (or ill intentioned), he or she could easily end up fueling the growth of a virus/bacteria in the body instead of the immune system, with lethal results. A wound could turn necrotic in seconds instead of hours or days, or a disease could ravage the body and kill a person right in front of your eyes. The above, I feel, I can model fairly easily, especially with a VPP and perhaps a negative Side Effect should a skill roll be failed (of course you have to be careful with Side Effects negatively impacting others, but I would be the GM and I don't see it as any different from "The fireball explodes in your hands, and everyone in the blast radius takes damage." Presumably, if you're trying to heal someone and instead kill them/maim them, that's a Side Effect you really didn't want to happen so it's still Limiting.). However, I'm trying to model a Killing Attack using this SFX. Specifically, I'm visualizing a wave of troops coming over battlements, the tide turning against the defenders, and the Life mage sends a wave of magic across the invading troops... who begin to scream and collapse as their bodies suddenly fill with tumors (whose growth is a natural if slow and uncertain process in the human body) that clog their lungs, weaken their muscles, blind them, or even burst their heads and internal organs. The attacking force breaks and the defending force frankly doesn't fare much better because it is horrifying to even describe this in a fictional context, let alone see it happen to people right in front of you (even if they were trying to kill you). At first I was thinking a Severe Transform but, upon review, Transform cannot be used to deprive a target of life. So, perhaps I should just build it as a massive RKA that is almost certain to kill any targets, perhaps with some sort of Advantage that limits how the "wounds" can be healed back? If this were a wave of fire or lighting, it would be easy. It is complicated because of how the residual effects linger for any survivors. How would you approach it? Also, as an aside, do you think that a Severe Transform: Give Target Terminal Lung Cancer is legit, in that it doesn't directly deprive a target of life but it will certainly lead to death in a span of a few weeks to months?

Or building a bigger bowling ball...

I'm assuming humans domesticated them for industry/war.

Nothing wrong; just a lot of hyper-specific examples sprang to mind that were not as useful to me because I wasn't very helpful in posting useful questions. Here's something that perhaps you'll find helpful as you offer suggestions: I want two magic systems, one a bit more classical in the sense that it tends to be slower but more powerful, and a wizard is truly dangerous when he or she is given a chance to prepare (so wizardry would require Limitations such as Gestures & Incantations, Extra Time: 1 Turn, etc.). Wizards can cast invisibility spells, or flight spells, or "Only someone of X-bloodline may enter this room safely." They're going to be like engineers/computer programmers, but they can spec for battle with some forethought (using Charges/prepared casting, putting spells into staffs/items for quick use, etc.). At the same time, I also want to have a sort of "wild" or "raw" magic that is conducive to creating a warrior-mage - someone who can get in the thick of a fight and use magic and a weapon at the same time. These guys should be scary up close in the thick of things, but lose in a one on one magic fight to any wizard that is of roughly comparable power and hasn't been caught completely off guard. I have a different set of Limitations in mind, but I would allow/require advantages to make this capable of fast/loud bangs. But what I'm really wrestling with is the underlying philosophy of magic, that makes it possible - that both systems exist in the same universe- that are consistent with the physics/underlying logic of the setting. The idea of physics really stuck with me - I wanted to play with the idea of drawing inspiration from the real world. At first I thought about making "wild mages" about manipulating the Four Fundamental Forces (gravity, strong, weak/electromagnetism). I decided to drop that route based upon further research. Then I started considering using other aspects of physics, and found some more inspiration - ideas like inertia, force. Heck, Newton's 3 Laws could be 3 distinct kinds of magic easily enough. I liked the idea of a trinity of trinities for organizing the fundamental forces/mechanisms of magic, which would be what combine together to form proper spells when multiple forces are manipulated by a proper wizard. Here's what I have so far: The Living Streams 1) Life (growth) - the creation of something from nothing; essential for any universe to exist. This allows for negentropy. 2) Stasis (continuity/inertia) - The continuation of a thing from one moment to the next; this is why things don't blink out of existence or die immediately 3) Death (decay) - the process by which something which is to break down and cease to be as according to its nature, much how organic matter is recycled in our ecosytems through natural decay processes. Entropy. The Material Arts 1) Destruction (diminishment) - breaking things, bonds, the reduction of a thing into less. Obviously battle applications. 2) Preservation (amplification) - taking something and making more of it from itself. 3) Transformation (alchemy) - taking one thing and making it into another thing. The Thoughtful Disciplines 1) Domination - the imposition of one's will on one's self or another, the making of one force obedient to another, the replacing of one will with another 2) Liberation - the removal of inhibition (not always a good thing), the removal of barriers to action, thought, or will 3) ??? These are my initial thoughts on some potential ways of organizing things. Between the three groups, we can roughly describe a universe- there is the physical world (what you see and touch), the living world (the mystery of life/existence), and the mental world. But I'm not sure if I'm content with this.

Unfortunately, porting over D&D would be the opposite of my goal, given that I've come up with a lot of ideas and know, for instance, how I want my two magic systems to look (and know exactly how orcs came into being, although I'll likely change their name to avoid exactly what happened with Wardsman), and am searching for recommended reading that helps from a meta/philosophical perspective. Once I start building things in HERO, I'll create a separate thread for feedback.

Oh, definitely just a region. I'm just developing enough of the world that impacts that region- things like cosmology, how magic works, some racial history etc. I've arbitrarily decided the planet is about the size of Jupiter (fantasy physics), that way I can functionally never run out of room if I want to drop something in. But all I'm worried about is what I need to develop at the meta-level that will actually matter at the micro. Mainly, that's magic. For the region, I know I want a pseudo-Roman empire feel that has recently finished consolidating two or three non-human nations into its society, and is bordered by a pseudo-uncontrolled area filled with nomads/tribes before reaching a series of perpetually warring states inspired by Medieval rivalries. The key distinction is that in the Empire, way back in the day a huge refugee fleet arrived (from a far off land where a Dark Lord won and basically took over a continent) with sufficient force to lift the local, ensalved human population into rebellion against their orcish oppressors and the mind-controlling dragon who dominated the region. The dragons in the rest of the continent who are manipulating their human societies were not terribly pleased, as much as they may have disliked that other dragon. This is what I can remember quickly from when I first sketched it out in college, which was far too long ago. bluesguy- Thanks! I remember reading that blog last year, but couldn't remember where I saw it when I decided to sit down and try to organize my thoughts.

So I've decided to take a crack at actually worldbuilding my fantasy homebrew. Previously I've had some rudimentary basics down - a continent and what part the campaign setting (nation) occupies, a single piece of mythology that explains why the gods don't directly intervene, etc. Right now I'm brainstorming magic system, and I know the gist of how I want it to look - both in descriptive terms as well as how to build it correspondingly. However, I keep coming up with questions that ask why things are the way they are, what is the underlying symbolism that drives these realities, etc. For example, in the Mistborn setting, there are (IIRC) 4 groups of 4 metals, and each group has a relatively tight theme, and within each group there are 2 pairs of opposites, etc. So, as I'm doing this, I'm also looking for guides/essays that could help structure my thinking. If you have any favorite posts, documents, or websites to share, I'd be much obliged. Thanks.

My HERO introduction was 5th (revised) in a fantasy game. I don't think I ever saw stats above 21, and that was a defining characteristic of whomever had that super high stat. I think the less people mistakenly equate HERO = Champions, the better.

Well, in most low tech settings, people will likely suffer from malnutrition and insufficient caloric intake to justify a rugged physique- since the advent of mass access to food comes with the advent of more advanced tech. I suspect a larger contributor to obesity (although you're right about the impact of motorized transportation) is simply how accessible food is AND how we've mostly managed to ruin it by turning into supercaloric junk. It would be great food for people burning 4k+ calories a day... but it's completely inappropriate for modern society except that it's FAST.

Given that there are no federal requirements for non-federal agencies....like a local fire department... to employ women... and in fact that there is no federal regulation anywhere requiring anyone to employ women.... turns out complying with non-discrimination in hiring regulations will be pretty easy.

That high sec. transpo suit is pretty much my worse nightmare, and I'm pretty sure you'd have to kill me/sedate me before you could get me into it.

Interesting. Entangle is the more obvious route but I look forward to more experienced minds than mind weighing in. First, as constructed, I imagine a rather natural reaction (one I would likely have) is that after encountering the invisible wall I would actively press my hands against it, look for edges, bang my fist against it and push with all my strength to see how strong it is. So...would I actually go through? Or am I like an unwitting mime?

Based on this conversation, if I ever get to build a PC again, I'm going to strongly consider really going through the rules for PRE and related abilities...

Yes. These are more detailed examples that make my point- that DEX is only as important as you make it, with the corollary that many people tend to make it important because of tendencies in gaming.