tesuji

gotcha.. so from my list its the "Or are you assuming that all mages have spellbooks of the same size, containing the same spells if only in number (with one possibility being that this number is "all spells known") thus making spells known a defined constant regardless of experience?" with all spells known being the constant. OK! gotcha. thats cool.

If it does what you want... fabulous. From an outsider point of view, not being privy to the obvious internal back-n-forth you have already gone thru, i would question one basic element. Isn't "how many spells i know" an important element in the assessment of a mage character's power? isn't it relevent at all? With the VPP system you described, a mage who has a spell book with 100s of spells in it will cost exactly the same CP (or spend exactly the same cp for the magic stuff) as one with maybe a dozen spells total in his spellbook. A fighter trained in a few weapons spends less (fewer weapon proficiencies as well as cheaper skill levels since they cover fewer attacks) than a fighter who is as good with lots of weapons. The lack of breadth is seen and reflected in the costs. Shouldn't this also be the case with the mage's "weapons"... spells known? Are you comfortable with telling the player who is running a character who "by concept" has only say six spells in his spellbook that he SHOULD and WILL pay the same price in cp for this as the other player sitting right next to him who has a character who starts with dozens of spells? If so, how do you see that balancing out in play? Are you comfortable telling your mage players that "what spells or how many spells you know won't matter?" Or are you assuming that all mages have spellbooks of the same size, containing the same spells if only in number (with one possibility being that this number is "all spells known") thus making spells known a defined constant regardless of experience? These would be the questions my players would ponder and ask me and take into consideration if i listed for them the system you defined. I figure you already have answers for these and took them into account when you decided this system worked for you. So i am curious as tyo what your replies would be. Thanks!

you will be targetting a hex... DCV 3 or 0. thats all for now.

A "miss" is an attack that did not get the required to hit roll. What you are describing is an attack which misses but does not scatter far enough away to "under normal condition" not still affect the initial target hex. Problem is, the AOE exception which makes Af AOE "misses" not do additional damage. A RAM-GL lau cher firing one grenade that misses the hex will scatter. A RAM-GL firing three AF grenades only has one go off if it misses... or rather might have all three going off and scattering but only one counts for damage against the primary target.

My suggestion for a magic system. ***************** MAge spells are bought as multipowers. Each multipower must take on its pool -1/2 to -1 in STYLE limitations. The Gm prepares ahead of time a series of styles, each representing a different approach to magic. In contradiction to the FAQ, variable lims are frequently used. SKILL ROLL is an optional thing also possibly required by the GM. If he wants magic in his world to represent "spells sometimes fail for no obvious reason" then it is apropos. If he wants to emulate the vast majority of literature and media references for fantasy gaming, it is unlikely to be part of the requirement. Spells are bought primarily as ultra slots. Its expected that a 150 mage will have a pool total of 80-120 points as a ballpark, enabling several spells. No spell may be bought with reduced end or 0 end. All normally 0 end capabilities are automatically "cost end" if purchased as spells. The typical spell will thus cost between 1-5 points after limitations and the slot cost are figured. *********************** Spells do not use END, they use MANA. Thus there is no reason for a physically tougher mage with high strength and muscle mass to be able to throw more spells. MANA is bought as an END reserve. Recovery for the MANA is REQUIRED to be bought with at least a "recover per hour" time delay per the end reserve rules. A typical mage can This models a particular theory, that mana exists as trace auras throughout the world and mages act as siphons and collectors, slowly trapping mana in growing concentrations. Areas of low to high mana can alter the recovery rate in special circumstances. *************************** Optional Rule: As an option the Gm can rule that spells above "half pool points" are especially difficult and list additional limitations for them. Side effects is a particularly effective choice. (This enables the Gm to allow large pools so mages can run multiple spells at once BUT not also open the door too widely for single UBERSPELLS.) ******************************* A point on reduced slot costs: For those who think that the /10 will mean people will not take lims, since a reduction of 1-2 points on a spells cost will be trivial compared to a 4-10 point change if the spells were bought independently, consider this. Cost is relative to gain. If the typical spell is between 1-5 points, then saving 1-2 points is significant. If the spell is running 15-30 points, like in the buy it yourself, then 4-10 points of savings is not any more significant. The question is not the realtive ordinal value of the savings but what it can buy you. If i already have a lightning bolt, how much should it cost to get a firebolt? not a wole lot.

True gandalf is not a mortal wizard, but, if we look to fantasy magic and spellcasters in literature and meida as at least some sort of reference material for the creation of systems of magic in games, his question is valid and as of yet still unanswered. Of the various references we can cite, what is the rough population of these categories of fantasy wizards/mages/sorcerers... Category 1: Their spells NEVER fail. Category 2: Their spells never fail unless directly countered by enemy actions, such as a strike timed to coincide with the casting or other such directed disruption. Category 3: Their spells only fail as a plot device as in "What do you mean my daughter is not a suitable virgin sacrifice? " Category 4: Their spells sometime fail on a random basis for no obvious reason. Now, my votes would put categories 1-3 as taken to gether comprising over 95% or more of the fantasy wizards i recall. As a matter of fact, the members in category 4 are almost exlusively the " "movice" mage or "apprentice" mage suddenly thrown well in above his head" stories and not anything dealing with "experienced" or "capable" mages or heroes. What about you? Do your references differ? Did I miss a category?

Except for one thing, autofire AOE attacks which miss just miss and go away, they do not spread like normal area attacks do.

Ok, so for sake of argument, lets take you arguments for how its too complex to do it right, too complex to break things down into interactive and independent, even though we know both exist for both type, lets say we all agree that would be too much work... So, now, for the 64 cp question, if we know that both linear and lumpsum, or independent and dependent costs, are both invalid or just approximations, simplifying it down to easier accounting... after all, easier accoutning is what HERo is known for far and wide... then why not use the SAME simplified accounting for advantages and limitations and be consistent? Why choose to ignore the synergistic effects for advantages, leaving them at a linear methodology, and not make the same decision, ignoring the overlap between limitations, and use linear for limitations? IF we are willing to say that 0 end for a 12d6 Eb will cost 30 points whether it saves you 6, 8 or 15 points by ignoring advantages, why can we not say that taking a full phase instead of a half phase on a 12d6 eb saves you 20 points (or if we use the 10% rule, 12 points) regardless of whether it comes from your fingertips or from a gun?

for what its worth, i consider the accusation of cheating to be inappropriate. Steve long personally encouraging his fans to get their spouses, children and coworkers in addition to their gaming group, involved in this voting is no more cheating than the various sleazy telephone scams where they use various means to encourage you to bring your "friends and family" over to their system. What was it that commercial said "So, you mean you want us all to work for the phone company." Since the origins award is a fabulous marketing tool, it seems only reasonable for Long and HERO games to follow the sound and proven marketting strategies and techiques used by those very telephone coompanies campaigns we all are so fond of. Why, heck, any day now, we may start getting cold calls during supper asking if we want to switch our DND game to fantasy HERO and how they can place the order for us right now. heck, we may even... crap, gotta go, the phone's ringing... later

Actually, most all limitations are NOT self-enforcing. Activation roll IS self-enforcing. Every time you want to use the power you make a roll. ENDURANCE? Not self enforcing at all. How often do you get hit with attacks powerful enough to con stun you and take you out? Well, that depends entirely on the basic offense and defense levels the GM sets, how often you meet 'equal power villain teams" as opposed to "uber single villains", and what are the acceptable norms for CON as the GM defined them. INCREASED ENDURANCE: Even up to say 3-4 times. Are your typical combats 1 turn or less in length or are they 3 turns or maybe 5 turn marathons? Now, sure, endurance and even increased endurance will make the PLAYER do some additional bookkeeping while the turns progress, but they won't necessarily influence or limit his character's actions UNLESS the Gm has a scenario setup so that it will come up. CHARGES: Again it adds bookkeeping but the severity of it again varies with the length of combat as well as the breaks time between combats. Some campaigns feature typically one big combat (not necessarily long in turns) a day and then downtime... so in those charges may not even be a limit at all. Another campaign might see a series of combats in rapid succession, classic "DND style", and so for those charges might be severe. Most limitations are not self-limiting but rather vary incredibly from no problem at all (save maybe from bookkeeping demands on the player) to minor nuisance to crippling flaw and these are all dependent much more on the scenario and campaign styles than the actual value of the limitation.

Hmmm... some jargon might be helpful... LINEAR modifiers: the points required for applying a modifier (whether they increase the cost or reduce it) is set solely by the base power and the "size" of the individual modifier and ignores (for the most part) the presence of other modifiers of the same type. (The way advantages currently work.) LUMP SUM modifiers: The points required for applying a modifier is determined by the total of all modifiers and the presence of other modifiers will change the points for specific individual ones. (The way limitations work now.)

Well, however, looking at advantages as the inverse of limitations, we can see that advantages can and do in many cases magnify each other. In much the same way you want limitations to skew their costs in order to reflect them getting in each other's way, why shouldn't advantages skew upwards to show that they are helping each other? For instance... 12d6EB is 60 ap and costs 6 end For 30 points 1 add 0 end and now every shot i save 6 end. then... For 50 points i add AOE and now the end thing saves me 9 end per use but it still only costing me 30 ap for the 0 end thing. The area is 9" radius. then... I add NND for 60 points. Now the 0 end thing which only cost 30 points is saving me 15 end per shot... over twice what i originally paid for. The radius has now gone up to 15" instead of 9. Now, in a more down to earth example, does anyone at all doubt that 6d6 AOE 3" r for 60 ap is LESS EFFECTIVE than 4d6 NND AOE 4" radius in a mythically average superheroes game? The fact that advantages used in certain combos provide a self-improving synergy is OBVIOUS. It is at least as obvious as the stepping on themselves downside for limitations is. So, why, if you believe the mutal step-on effect for limitations SHOULD produce the mutliple limitation cost slow down as it does now would you also support advantages working linearly when their "synergistic" or "multiplicative" effects are just as evident? What justification is there for having one work linearly and the other multiplicatively? So, you seem to be saying that a single approach for both fabntasy and supers is not necessarily the best choice? Should a supers game be built to make a separate fantasy game work the way it is supposed to? Why not build a supers game to work as a supers game should and a fantasy game to work as a fantasy game should? Now, if you are hung up on making the same mechanic work for both, then you could set a dial. The value for each -1/4 is... 10% to a max of 80 for supers campaigns. 5% to a max of 80 for "heroic" campaigns. this way fantasy games would be able to run up as far as -4 before running into the wall. There are already many differences defined for heroic vs superheroic already in the system. of course, the notion that -2 is considered something akin to nearly useless in superheroes but considered inadequately limited in fantasy games may well say something about the value of limitations in itself. It appears again to me that both advantages and limitations both have synergistic (or anti synergists) impacts when multiples are applied to the same base power and it seems obvious that both should work the same, either linbearly or multiplicatively in terms of assessing their cost in order to produce consistent costs for effects. I mean, isn't saving 15 end or even 9 end per shot worth more than saving 6 end? isn't this just as significant a cost vs effect thing as "when he doesn't have his gun he never encounters the full phase problem?" Why should saving 15 end a shot cost maybe 30 points for one power, maybe 50 for another, and maybe as high as 75 points for a third, all depending on how many different advantages are applied to the power?

Just as an aside for all those... it CANNOT work this way, it cannot be linear and that its just plain silly to expect that applying full phase to a 12d6 Eb to produce a CONSISTENT change in the points returned regardless of other limitations... I would like to point out that in HERO ADVANTAGES work that way. The value of AP +1/2 applied to a 12d6 Eb is 30 points, and that 30 points remains 30 points whether it is also 0 END, or also Invisible, or also Indirect. Doesn't it seem inherently flawed to make enhancementsor improvements to a power linear and of consistent value based on power level but make restrictions and reductions in a power follow a radically different method of value assignment? ******************* Second note, for the issue of cannot do linear because after a while you still reach a point where the costs have to vary or you get to 0. Indeed you are correct. However, the lack of a perfect solution, one which never results in skews, does not mean that all the solutions left are good ones. For example... try wrapping your brain around this version: Limitations: Each -1/4 worth limitation reduces the powers cost by 10% of the cost ignoring any limitation. So a -1/2 will remove 12 points from the cost of a 60 ap power regardless of whether it is limited by other lims. Exception: No power can have its cost reduced below 20% of its original value without Gm approval. So, in this case the 60 ap power, the 12d6 Eb, would have each and every -1/4 worth of lims reduce his power by 6 points UNTIL you reached -2. Now, in my experience, MOST powers chosen by players have FEWER than -2 worth of limitations. I think, just a suspicion but we can easily look this up and do some math, that even if i look in crooks, conquerors and killers, and champions universe for all the limited powers there that probably 95% of them will fall into the "-2 or less worth of lims" category and very few, maybe 1 in 20 tops, will go more than -2 in lims. The current system, begins producing inconsistent results as soon as a second limitation, regardless of the severity of the limitations, is applied. This skew thus begins affecting many more characters right off the bat, most every gun with ammo will feel the skew. The linear method which only starts skewing the cost after the limitations have mounted up IN SEVERITY, not in numeral counting, to beyond the point of "mostly useless" at -2 will mean you keep a consistent cost structure for most characters with lims AND that you really wont start mucking the costs until after you go beyond "mostly useless." Consistent costs for lims over 95% of the cases and skewed costs over the remaining 5% seems like a better system than one which begins skewing almost immediately and affects more guys. ********************************** just a thought

Early on i has a lady take "enraged by country and western music" and it was about the third session when the fleeing villain cut through a bar during his run to escape... and the juke box had tammy wynette playing stand by your man... the player was just plain dumbfounded as she watched he character wreck the jukebox and start a bar fight as the villain escaped.

Or one could consider expressing these things in a way other than 1/4 of the power and so forth. certainly if you use the limitations as they are defined now, you must use them with the system they are designer for. Thats obvious. Whats being said is... but look, that way doesn't work. it produces inconsistent or maybe even nonsensical results. (depends on how seriously you take the +10 ocv vs +3 ocv or +20 stun vs +6 stun examples. Consider, if the math fails in this relatively simple case, to produce results that look reaqsonable or even seem to hold balance, why should you trust the same mechanical model to work in all those cases where its not as obvious?

First, its the difference between a full phase to make the attack and a half phase, not a full turn. Second, the stun vs Eb comparison is just an example i thought was easy to highlight. Its not whether 20 stun matches upvs the EB but rather how does 20 stun match up vs 6 stun. You get one of those beneifts as compensation for the full phase, but which one you get depends on the other limitations involved. That is the problem, that the rewards vary while the penalties remain relatively the same. But, even if i accept your notion, which is correct? Does taking a full phase vs a half phase work out against +3 OCv from specific skill levels or vs +10 OCv from specific skill levels? It seems to me that one or the other should be right, or maybe somewhere in between but surely both cannot be right? Simply put, its not about "did i get good stuff for my 20 points" or "duid i get good stuff for my 6 points" but rather should i get 20 points or 6 points for taking a full phase instead of a half phase on a 12d6 attack?

Yeah i forget which thread i was in but i discussed the failure of the HERo multiplier system I think i used FULL PHASE as an example... Two lightning twins each have a 60 ap 12d6 energy bolt. Fast Shot has 12d6 eb lightning with no lims for 60 points. Slow shot has the same bolt with 12d6 and full phase for 40 points AND to compensate him for his slow shot he also has tw overall levels (+2 for any action/check etc) costing 20 points or to make it simple to see lets say +20 stun. Thats where the syetem says "its balanced. All other things being identical, the system says that full phase on that attack and 2 overall levels or +20 stun is fair. Same characters but they are guntoters and their 12d6 attacks are from OAF guns. Now the gun costs the FAST SHOOTER 30 points. THe gun cost the SLOW shooter 24 points. So now, the slow shooter is told "you dont get any overall levels to compensate" and you don't get +20 stun to compensate" and has only 6 points to spend. "How does +6 stun sound?" Now, since both guys took OAF, we should expect that they will both suffer loss of gun, breakage of gun, unable to get gun past security systems fairly evenly. Matter of fact, as twins operating together, they are likely to have just as many focus issues as the other. The importance of the lost phase vs half phase WHEN they have the gun is just as severe as it is above. But now, instead of +2 overall levels or +20 stun our slow guy is limited to some lesser skill levels or +6 stun. Now, it might be me but this rather simple example with slow (full phase) and gun (OAF) being neither complex things in the system nor unknown rare things in comics (heck, i often use slow and oaf to represent a high recoil gun you have to get ready for like a PGMP-12) seems to show a glaring discrepancy between cost and effect by valuing the savings differently even though the effect is the same. just my 2 cents.

Historically, i have experienced several types of character designs. The experienced hero guy for whom there is a lot of effort spent in making the concept into something that hero works well, that hero's accounting favors. They don't "sacrifice concept" for the system, per se, instead they simply choose to play concepts they know the hero system will let them do well with and avoid concepts that hero disfavors. often these guys will have that -1/4 lim that rewards the most and by concept it will be one they hope they can avoid much in play. Another type is the limitation monger. Everything is limited possibly by just OIF but many different lims are typically the way. This guy figures he wont feel the sting of all of these enough and may well feel that by designing it as an all-or-nothing (iron man, everything is in his suit) that the Gm will be "unable" to really inflict the lim because then it would be a "normal vs supers" which is not a scenario many GMs will relish running. (Same guy may also have disads like susceptable to mind control, 3d6 per segment, in the belief that getting something like 25+ points for "my character falls unconscious when he is taken out of my control" is a win-win situation for him.) Independent is frequently a preferred argument for these guys. First time with a GM they take independed and argue that the lose the points things should not apply. It seems like a rite of passage thing where they are testing the Gm to see how far they can go. There may be some overlap between the experienced hero guy and the limitation monger. The third type is the relative newbie who has been told "you can do anything" in HERo and did not even bother to question that obvious fallacy. So they come in and describe a character and usually within 15 minutes are staring blankly at the sheet anbd asking the GM to design it. After several back-n-forths, they realize that "you can do anything" has a sort of trailing "as long as you do it the way HERO wants you to" and are now going to either compromise a little or leave. A lot of the choice there is made by how good them GM is at working the system to mee the character, or rather, how willing he is. If he keeps her interested, the next step is explaining the combat and choices and if he keeps her through that one, she is probably staying. ************************** Towards the end of my hero runs, i was talking about turning all HERO mimitations into "severioty and frequency"... because except for a few cases (like activation roll) the "impact" of a lim is set more by scenario design than any mechanical aspect? Example: Something as MECHANICAL as six charges. If the typical fight in the campaign lasts one turn and if the campaign rarely has more than one fight a day or rather, between times to run home and reload, this is a basically non-limiting flaw. If the campaign typically features two-three turn fights and the typical scenario involves an initial dustup followed by rapid response and a second or even thrd fight in succession, this is a crippling flaw. I thinkk that if players thought of a limitation in temrs of not "hey, i can avoid this" but instead as expressing it in terms of "how many sessions in 10 do you want this flaw to actually hinder you and get in the way?" and "how much do you want this flaw to hinder you when it does" and they understood that by taking the points they are committing not to the threat or possibility of these situations coming up but to the REALITY and INTENTIONAL design of scenarios which make these limitations come up, that you would see much fewer limitations and much smaller limitations used. Consider the following... FREQUENCY -1/4 = 1 session in 5 -1/2 = every other session -1 = every session SEVERITY -0 = minor (costs you a few phases dealing with it) -1/4 = major (costs you a turn or maybe even a combat) -1/2 = total (takes you out of the session) -1 (total and with external problems that your teammates will have to deal with) Lost actions are just one example. Your player describes a flaw on a power in dramatic terms. You and he discuss some of the forms of the flaw in play, its SFX if you will, and then you let him assign severity and frequency and, if you approve, you go with it. In play, he expects those problems and knows he will have to deal with them. EXAMPLE: The player says "my powers are in a battle suit like iron man's." Now you and he discuss the various problems that will be the FX for the flaw biuting him, including it sometimes gets hit hard and powers shut down or get broken and need fixing, sometimes i wont have it with me, sometimes enemies can override my systems and i might lose control, sometimes i might be unable to get back to base to reload or recharge, etc etc... Then the player decides how severe he wants thses flaws to be when they appear and how frequently. You then also cover that, on occasion, for dramatic purposes, there might be some exceptional circimstances and so the severity of frequency might vary a bit.

A suggestion i would have for a power armored character is the following... the semi-PA guy. This guy has some sort of armor/tech suit and weaponry, however he also has a limited use suite of real honest to goodness super powers too. These super powers provide him with some abilities he cannot typically get from PA and allow him to be "functional" WHEN, not IF but WHEN, he is unable to use his suit, thus making the enforcement of the OIF/OAF flaws possible. Example: A psychic who end sup with a power suit he took from bad guys early in his carreer and who now uses it to fight crime. Multipower: Psychic Powers 60 ap pool -1 lim TRIPLE END 30 ap Five 60 ap mentalist slots for 3 points each with telepathy, ego blast, mind control, mental illusion and so on as you see fit. Total cost for my psychic abilities = 45 points. That should still leave you with enough points for armor, flight, life support all OIF as the suit. A blaster or weapons rack in a second multipower will weigh in as well. Charges on the weapons is fine. What will happen in practice is you will likely end up tossing in one or two mental attacks in a combat, and that triple endurance will eat up a lot of your personal end BUT you won't be using that end for much else. Another interesting theme is to have your "special powers be a different theme. like say "mutant teleporter" (alien works well too) and put TRIPEL END on the multipower as before. Under teleportation you can put your movement, some megascale (downsizable) and even an attack NND does body for popping things into people to serve as a backup attack. The advantage of this one is that you can take a shortcut and drop flight from the suit side, freeing up more points. Using triple end for tactical movement when thats all you personal end is used for is very efficient, though you will feel the pinch if you get into a long running combat. The possibilities for a "mini-super power" set backing up a more typical armored goon suit/gun combo make this a very "synergistic" combo... tapping in and getting benefit from your personal end and making for a wonderful set of alternatives. The villain who expects the entangle to shut down your GUN and thus keep you trapped will be shocked when you 'port a chair over into the entangle to shatter it and are suddenly free... and shooting right away.

While my opinion of Sh is markedly and drastically different than the other posters here, I think it was a great idea for HERO to make a serious stab at expanding into the SCIFI RPG market. I think they are dead on as to the potential there and hope the whole Terran Empires line works for them. More SCIFI source material is always a good thing. heck, it even has marvelous tie in potential for supers campaigns... IMO moreso than fantasy would.

Just as an aside... Do you really think the ability to summon a normal car is worth 24cp for a superheroic game? For the same cost i could get a blaster rifle with 4 clips of 4 charges doing 12d6. For 20 points i could go invisible. Do you think the taurus' will prove anywhere near as useful as these?

buy a naked advantage "area of effect cone of **** powers" as a separate power and buy your Eb normally as one of those types of powers. The advantage to this method is two fold... 1. if you buy more "type of *** powers in the future you can apply this naked advantage to it. The new *** would be in a multipower of course, iirc. 2. You do not end up having to pay additional points for "slot costs"... which would save you 18 cp assuming 12d6 EB. there are plenty of examples of naked advantages being used when multipowers would have been just as viable in the various book examples to support this. One of the best is putting megascale as a naked advantage so you can use the power normal or megascale at whim.

Ok, damage shield is at its base a "neutral" thing. Like a land mine, it will affect anyone for whom its conditions are met. With your DS up, if a friend is KBed into you, he takes damage. With your damage shield up, if you need to grab someone to stop them from falling off a ledge, they take damage. With your damage shield up, if you get KBed into someone or something, damage is done. These are built in downsides or risks with the power. Removing these by adding a sort of "bad guys only" modifier IS NOT A LIMITATION. It is an advantage. "only malicious intent" is basically at its core a "bad guys only clause." 99.99% of the time the people you do not want to hurt won't be the ones attacking you with malicious intent. 99.99% of the time the ones attacking you with malicious intent WILL BE the ones you want to hurt. So, from the get go, drop the notion of making this DS CHEAPER by removing its downsides. Removing downsides is an improvement. At the very least, i would start my line of analysis with +1/2 SELECTIVE like is used in area attacks to allow you to pick and choose. HOWEVER, there is still a wrinkle. Selective for AOE goes from "everyone is affected automatically" (which compares nicely with damage shield's "everyone touching/hitting is affected") to "only those you choose are affected IF you make a to hit roll." So, for +1/2 for selective your DS would only affect those touching you with malicious intent BUT only if you then made a successful attack roll. Some would argue that this would mean "affects only those with malicious intent but affects them automatically" raises up to +3/4 or even +1. Me? i would probably let it slide at +1/2. But, its not a limitation!

My biggest issue with prerolling is simple... with all the options that affect damage dice like spreading and various maneuvers and pushing and cutting back to save end and so on... less than half of my villain shots would ever be at their "base level." The would not be just wailing away like normal. So i would need a master chart of many different dice pools rolls, possibly one for each character and frankly, i can roll and figure faster than pulling out the right chart and crossing the x and y. Thats just me, however. I can see in games where the villain's attacks and tactics are lending themselves to doing "base normal damage dice" again and again this could be a time saver. of course, i have experienced players who had issues with poregen dice lists, who see them as "preordaining" rather than the "randomness" of actual rolling in front of them.

lump me in with the crowd in favor of... LOTSA RKA +2 NND does body (defense is a con roll or a die roll of roughly 50%) -1/2 all or nothing You might also want to provide a small lim for "only affects such and such" since this wont affect walls and the like. Now, that said, looking for a death spell effect that is available within a reasonable poiint total and which has good dramatic potential (i find save or die to be anti-dramatic)... 1d6 RKA +2 NND does body (con roll) +1 persistent +1 continuous +1/2 uncontrolled thats about 82 ap. you again might want to add only vs certain targets and no stun, which are valid here. Another WONDERFUl limit for this spell would be either extra time or gradual effect, so that the subsequent damage levels occur less frequently than every 3 seconds. This spell when thrown on someone would start killing them. It would keep killing them round by round, slowly. Each round they make the con roll, they avoid damage. Each round they fail the con roll, they lose body. Eventually they will die unless they do something to stop the spell from killking them. This creates drama... its every bit as intense an effect as a big red digital timer counting down on a bomb. Now, every continuous effect needs an obvious counter. So in this case there does have to be some reasonable means to prevent it. If this were a "dark magics" spell then getting to a holy place or being blessed or maybe even a cleansing ritual or special herb could be the trick. Regardless, this should be chosen and broad or vague enough to make it not impossible, just tricky, in most cases. (I would NOT make "killing the mage who cursed me" a viable cut off, as that merely turns this into another reasons to bash something quickly. ) I would find this type of a "certain impending doom" effect much more useful in most any game i have ever run than a "sudden doom" spell. Note that this version, while slower, does lick the "but if he is big enough" issue with body. Eventually, anything will die. The only obvious downside is that if it has enough regen or healing to heal the body as fast as it comes in, it wont work. Just my thoughts.