Anatosuchus

Re: SPD, but only for (x)? Ah, I think you've answered my unspoken question - "is it OK to monkey about with allowed phases within a given turn?" and the answer is "well, we would." I shall go with that in the event it comes up. Thanks!

Hi Chaps, Something of a noob question, I'm sure. I'm trying to write up a survivalist who has a normal SPD of 3, but who has spent quite some time training with firearms (of course). The net result is that I want him to be relatively normal in most (combat) situations, but I want him to be able to aim and fire a little more rapidly dou to his specialism. It seems that a SPD+1, only for firearms might be one way of doing this, but that means I have to decide at the beginning of each turn whether our man is going to spend that entire turn doing "gun stuff" or "other stuff" which seems odd. I suspect there might be a more elegant way of doing what I want to do, so I ask the board for some opinions. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Clarification - this is for a heroic level game and the cahracter in question is a relatively "normal" NPC.

Re: Living Steel? There must be quite a few of us in that category. I tried playing it once but it took about 3 hours to run a few seconds of one-on-one combat...

Re: Living Steel? Oscar Schneiderbunk?

Re: Recent purchases, and what's next? Ah, 192 isn't too bad (at least since I bought a duplex printer) and I don't think there's a single hard copy left in the UK. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't about to dump something the size of Fantasy Hero to my printer. Now, is that the sound of my credit card cringing in fear...? May I say how impressed I am with your answering all my questions over the last couple of weeks. You must spend a lot of time around here. Many thanks! I have to spread some rep around before I give you any more though...

So, I had a bit of splurge this month on deciding that HERO would be my system of choice for future games and bought 8 books : 5ER Combat Handbook Star Hero Fantasy Hero FH Grimoire FH Grimoire II Hero Bestiary (a bit better than my 1986-vintage 56-page one!) Ultimate Mystic Do I get a prize? Next purchase up: Probably Ultimate Martial Artist, but it looks like the print status of that one means I'll have to get the PDF. Can anyone tell me how thick UMA is? If it's really huge I'll have to consider waiting until I can buy a print version. Bonus question (which I guess might get this thread moved): What's the largest number of gaming books you've ever puchased in one short sharp shock to the bank balance?

I've done a variety or martial arts for years, I know my wind-fire wheels from my deer hook swords, and yet I haven't the first clue what a spread-the-water knife is. My Google-Fu won't dig up any images - can somebeody please enlighten me (preferably with a picture)?

Re: Example low fantasy characters Now, this is what I'm looking for. Many thanks, SS!

Re: Example low fantasy characters Ah thanks, I'll see how well my credit card is feeling... I think I've more-or-less sold myself on HERO anyway. I have spent the whole weekend vacillating between using HERO, GURPS, CORPS, EABA and my own incomplete system as the system of choice for the forseeable future, and have become increasingly frustrated with everything. I might just have found the light at the end of the tunnel. I'd give you reputation, but I have no idea how it works, and anyway I don't seem to have any to hand out yet (unsurprisingly)...

I'm evaluating HERO to see if I can make it "my generic system of choice" but (as other threads on this site indicate) I like relatively low powered games and I'm not sure how well these will work. The next thing I need to do is run a bunch of sample combats with some 100-odd point characters to see how differentiated they are. I have HeroDesigner but it will take me several hours to figure out how to create these blighters without examples. Can anyone direct me to any resources for this sort of thing? Does Fantasy Hero have many low powered examples in the book? (...eyes up credit card speculatively...)

Re: More example combats? Thanks for the link, but I'm a Linux man myself unfortunately. Still, maybe I'll give it a go under an emulator when I get time.

Confession: Despite being a roleplayer for 22 years and using a wide variety of systems (including the legendarily complex RoleMaster and, if it isn't a dirty word, GURPS 3 and 4), all of which I have got the hang of in short order, I just can't seem to get my head round HERO. I really want to, because I have heard great things and I totally appreciate the toolkit approach. The example combat in Fred is totally superheroic, which is one of the genres I'm least interested in. I really like realistic(-ish) modern, low fantasy and hard-ish sci-fi. It would probably help my understanding if I could see some detailed example combats for some of these less heroic genres - can anyone post any links to such things?

Re: Ninja / Martial arts questions Excellent. Thanks chaps - looks like I'll have to have myself a little core rules playtest.

Hi Chaps, I'm currently trying to get my head around Hero 5th (hard!), and if I manage it I'm likely to want to buy some supplements. This leads to a couple of questions: (a) I have a 1990 vintage first printing Ninja Hero. Can anyone tell me how different the current edition is? ( What is the difference in content between Ninja Hero and The Ultimate Martial Artist? TIA! Matt.