tarragon

Re: How to Build: Interval The second form of this is covered by Delayed use in the Advanced Players Guide (APG 144).

Re: How does flash work. AKA I am an idiot. It leaves them at 1/2 DCV to any of your friends who have a saved action. In the right circumstances that's incredibly useful for a 15 point power.

Re: Help with Old West Weapon design My first thought is that the guns are free and this is a Psych Complication to only use limited weapons. The value of paying points for a weapon is getting to define it better and getting something others don't have and getting it back. I'm trying to figure out what advantage you get when you buy an otherwise standard weapon. The only advantages I can think to give as a GM would be better access. If the party looses all their weapons somehow you'll get a replacement easier than the others will. In fact, this is the opposite of what will happen to this character.

Re: As A Hero Gamer, Do You Use The Surbrook's Stuff Website? I love looking at the character archive. I primarily use the adoptions. Both as a way to judge character strength and as a model for for characters with similar abilities and characteristics. If I can come up with a character concept that I can compares to a known character I can often find that character or someone similar to base my own writeup on. Since you asked I found your resources section which I hadn't looked at before but will give me a lot of reading to do. My ultimate wish list item, and I know how much work it is so I don't expect to actually see it, would be a parametric search of the hosted characters. I'd love to be able to search by one or more criteria such as total points, edition, keywords, heroic/superheroic.

Re: Unsure how, why, where... or _whether_ to start! I personally went with the books + PDFs option. The books are really nice and I can't imaging running a gaming system without physical books to thwap the rules lawyers with. HERO absolutely has the best indexes of any gaming books, you could get along with just the physical books. Even so being able to search the PDFs is a nice step up. That and being able to carry the hero books where ever I am by keeping them on my keychain flash drive and not in a backpack pushed me over into getting both.

Re: Unsure how, why, where... or _whether_ to start! Surprisingly, to me anyway, no one has mentioned Narf's wonderful 2 page intro to HERO. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/77944-Hero-In-Two-Pages-Complete?p=1967242 As others have said all of Hero's complexity is up front. Once the GM has the world the way they want it and the characters are built the play is actually quite simple and can be very fast. Narf's document works well as a handout for players and covers everything you need to know to play. Edited: Yes I edited this 12 years (!!!) later. Wha can I say, I was looking for this again.

This is kind of a split from a discussion starting at the end of the 6E Characteristic Maximum thread where both mayapuppies and killer shrike are noticing lower CVs in Heroic level games and a follow up to my thread 5E character in 6E game where I talk ask about just dropping5E characters in a 6E game. I'm starting up a new 6E fantasy campaign after not having GM'd since the early '90s. I'd like to keep my workload as small as possible so I'm planning on making heavy use of the 5E Bestiary and Monsters books. Almost everything seems to work if I drop these in untouched with one exception. My thinking is to keep the PCs CV in the 4-6 range. More than that an the costs get prohibitive. They'll still be beyond normals with their 3 CV, particularly once the PCs add martial maneuvers and skill levels. The problem is that it seems like a lot of the book monsters would seriously outclass them at that level. Currently one PC has been built and will probably serve as a model for the others. She's a prodigy light fighter with OCV 5 DCV 6, with no skill levels and a good set of the fencing maneuvers. I'd still like to use these books with minimal effort if I can. I'm thinking of taking the sheets as is with the exception of CV which I would calculate as DEX/4 or DEX/5. A number of the sheets use breakpoint DEXs, 14 and 20 are very popular. With the division I suggest that would change: [font="Courier New"] DEX Cur CV /4 CV /5 CV 10 3 3 2 11 4 3 2 12 4 3 2 13 4 3 3 [b]14 5 4 3[/b] 15 5 4 3 16 5 4 3 17 6 4 3 18 6 5 4 19 6 5 4 [b]20 7 5 4 [/b] [/font] Anyone have experience with using the 5E books relatively untouched in 6E? Any thoughts on my idea of changing the CV divider? Am I simply wrong to think that PC CVs will end up in the 4-6 range?

Re: Placed shots effective? Some groups are OK with that kind of thing and some don't get it. I'm on the OK side of this; I wish more people were.

Re: How do you build a vampire template in 6E? The problem you (the OP) are running into is fundamental to the system. We track points as kind of a rating of effectiveness for PCs and NPCs. With that we can try and maintain balance between PCs and to have a quick and dirty way to compare characters. You are trying to add effectiveness (stronger, faster, tougher) to a target character permanently by spending points on an attacking character. The normal way that effectiveness is gained permanently is accomplished is to make the character getting more effective pay the points for those powers and skills. There is no RAW (Rules As Written) to accomplish what you want to do because it's against the basis of the system. To do it you need to get a little meta about the system and figure out what you want. You want a vampire version of someone to be more powerful than the non-vamp version of that person. You want vampires to be able to turn others into vampires and you want vampires to pay a fair amount for that ability. You want PCs that are transformed to remain playable. People have suggested summon or transform with a bit of modification. From my point of view those are perfectly fine ways to go if the target isn't playable afterwards. If you let the new vamp remain playable you have a point imbalance to deal with. Some groups are just fine with that kind of imbalance, but it takes very mature players who understand the system well and can play to concept. A lot of groups have problems due to point envy. I can suggest another possibility. First, make them more powerful by making the character being changed pay the cost of al the new abilities. It's the fair by the book way. If it's a PC they spend XP or if they don't have it, they borrow XP and buy the abilities. This kind of character rewrite was often called a radiation accident in older rulesets. If the target is an NPC they they pay the points for it but NPCs are easier, the GM assigns NPC points as appropriate. So the GM can add the points or make them disappear to "earn them" Second to make the attacking character pay for the ability you're going to have to estimate a price. Find a way to come up with what you think a fair price is. You can start with the cost of having bought this a Transform or a Summon. Alternatively you can treat it as a perk. Compare the utility to the various perks that exist, it's kind of like Access, and it's kind of like Fringe Benefit. Is this more or less useful than Diplomatic Immunity, License to Kill, something like that? Then call it a new perk: Vampire Transform 10 pts

Re: Firearms in fantasy? Interesting. It has been a long time since I've done this so I may be misremembering. Let me clarify, I don't recall seeing people maintain the flints or replacing them. But I also didn't read the original question well enough either. Talking at a higher level people would adjust the lock mechanism and reseat the flint occasionally. On the other hand, SSgt Baloo's find seems way to often for adjustments I remember. Of course this is also 20 years ago, I'm not going to claim my memory as definitive and Baloo has a source. I'd go with that.

Re: Firearms in fantasy? I used to shoot period firearms. Mostly caplock for me, but there were plenty of guys who shot flintlocks. Even over the course of a week long shoot I never saw one of them maintain or replace the flints in anyway or even talk about the need to.

Re: Ranged HA - What so bad about it Actually... In 6E is there a downside to putting STR and a blast in a multipower? Moving STR out of characteristics doesn't lose you any figures. I don't see the downside.

Re: Easiest way to... emulate 5th negative skill levels in 6th

Re: Working Notes for my Campaign Conversion to 6E You could grandfather the characters in. If you were happy with the character balance before then don't worry about it. Convert them over directly, them let them play as they are and ignore the point differences. 6E doesn't play any differently than 5E so if the characters were balanced before they should still be balanced.

Re: How do you build a vampire template in 6E? If it's a good idea don't drop it because because you can't come up with a cost for the mechanics cost it. This is a plot device and plot devices don't need to be costed cleanly. If this is for an NPC just give them the ability. NPC costs are hidden from the players so they'll never know anyway. If this ability is for a PC you can just set a value that seems appropriate. Treat it like a perk, 10 points to be able to turn others.