Christopher R Taylor

Yeah Invisible power Effects would make someone never notice the effect on them.

You're right, and that's an issue to be careful with as a GM. Add skill levels in (2/damage class add) and it can become completely out of control in a very big hurry. So you cannot just look at a few numbers and decide if a character is safely within your preferred limits in a campaign. Others have suggested mitigating issues (damage to the weapon, etc) and I would suggest an absolute hard cap. No matter what, at this power level, you cannot go over x damage classes. Players understand that and can work with it.

Backstab, vanish, escape (puff of smoke, he's gone!), sap, walk without leaving tracks, etc are all classic stealth tricks

His law wasn't that they're identical, just that to outside perception they seem the same. For the medieval peasant, a flashlight is witchcraft, but that doesn't actually make it magical.

You do with galleys because they usually were poor sailors and the captains unused to controlling a ship without oars. Also, depending on the sophistication of the sailors, they might only be able to sail by day because they're following coastlines. Only very primitive sailors would do this, but its something to consider.

Its going to depend a lot on the special effects, but in general I'd say the second application or "tick" of effect, the target should be aware of the building effect, if they are self aware or have any reasonable level of intelligence.

Images (not there) with a modifier to perception or change environment penalty to perception can do this. It can end up more expensive than just plain invisibility with modifiers to be effective, though.

I use a system like that. For a -2 to hit penalty you can try to get a location, and if you hit, you roll location normally. Then, for each point you hit by, you can move your hit location roll by 1 toward that intended target. So, you roll your attack at -2 OCV, then roll location. Say, you targeted their head, and with the penalty managed to hit by 3. You roll the hit location, a 9: shoulder. Since you hit by 3, that is moved 3 points toward the head, which gives you a 6: he threw up a hand between you and his head! It worked pretty well but I was nervous about people targeting vitals. Since that's so central, its pretty easy to get a roll near that, as 10-11 is average on 3d6, and its a sweet x2 body, x4 stun hit location.

Carratu Carratu are small maples that produce large amounts of sap. Only found along ocean shores, these gnarled plants are twisted by the winds and never grow larger than four meters in height. It is only when the sap runs clear that it has any herbal potency, which is not common. Effect: Lifestoring* for one day Addictive: no Origin: Ocean Shore Rarity: -3 Preparation: Sap smeared on victim’s lips Storage: d3 days Cost: 13 silver *Lifestoring is a concept I swiped from MERP. Certain herbs in the listing have the effect “Lifebringing” which is a specific effect for Jolrhos Fantasy Hero. A Lifebringing herb is one that is able to restore life to an apparently deceased victim. Such a victim is not fully dead; they are only mostly dead and can be restored to life with the proper magic. A mostly dead person is one that has been reduced to a Body score equal to negative their starting Body or lower, but not for an extended time. The soul will remain in or near the body for one minute plus one turn per point of original Constitution the body had in life. A Lifebringing herb when applied to such a mostly dead person will take them up to 1 in all stats, including body and stun. The victim will be unable to move or act except short statements, and will spend most of their time sleeping and healing. All stats will recover at the same rate as Body through natural healing until the character’s body and Constitution scores are healed to full, at which point all stats will heal equal to the character’s recovery per hour to full. A mostly dead character brought to life will have their entire body impaired until all of their stats are fully healed. A Lifestoring herb is one which when properly applied will extend the length of time which a character is “mostly” dead. The Lifestoring effect will keep a body in this stasis state for as long as the given herb specifies, usually much longer than typical for a body. When the herb is applied, the normal time period which a body will remain mostly dead remains as long as the herb's Lifestoring ability continues, then the countdown starts again. Further, that given herb cannot be used to maintain a body’s connection to its soul, although a different Lifestoring herb could be then used. There isn't really a resurrect spell in Jolrhos, as such. There are lifestoring and lifebringing herbs, or a necromantic spell which seems to bring someone back to life, but the transformation of corpse to animated body (which seems alive) 'heals' back at the same rate that person would recover body naturally over time.

Well that's just it, I wouldn't base the entire build around the max, but its something I like to keep in mind.

Sure, but it only has to happen once for Joe the Barbarian to one-shot the Dragon King and make everything look silly.

The Maker of Universes by Philip Jose Farmer. 3½ stars Fun pulpy stuff. I read it back in high school, but it was nice to revisit after so many years. He spends a bit too much time explaining things as if there are critics standing around shouting "but how does..." but it still is breezy and entertaining. Farmer is very creative and he spins a fun yarn with lots of unexpected new ideas and twists.

As a GM I tend to balance my games around maximums as well as averages. So I look at the worst case scenario and decide if that's going to break the game. Then I look at averages and decide if that's going to give the overall results that I want to happen most of the time. However, it is true that generally speaking, when something shifts the power in the favor of the player, it costs more points rather than being a freebie for rolling well.

I don't really understand why he's ducking. Maybe for aiming? That thing is no cover.

Part of the reason people are recoiling from using Minor Transforms might be that they are thinking in terms of 5th (10 points per d6) rather than 6th (5 points per d6). At that cost, I agree Minor is too much. Its also why you should at least drop the 6th edition cost structure (Cosmetic 3/d6, Major 10/d6, Total 15/d6) into your 5th edition game, if not move to 6th.

Yep, that's the plan. Lots of recipes, lots of details on end results, lots of information on how to run trade skills and make them part of a game, costs, equipment required, etc. Its a bit tedious to make, but I think it has some value for fantasy gaming and can be used in pretty much any game system with very minor adjustments. It will be specific to my gaming world in terms of ingredients, but the concepts can be used anywhere that has dragons, etc.

I think reduced penetration works fine to reduce body damage while doing lots of stun, particularly on a normal attack. Its just the reverse approach to increased stun multiple: it does less body rather than more stun.

I do like the concept of maneuvers to increase damage or accuracy. They make sense in real life too: you can hit someone a good 99 times out of 100 if all you want to do is contact, but you're not going to do any damage that way. And you can hit a lot harder if you don't care about actually hitting, just pure impact. So sacrificing a damage class to get +1 OCV or one OCV to get +1 damage class seems very reasonable to me. But no matter how much I sold or explained them, nobody actually wanted to do it.

The trick is coming up with how to make stuff magical, without requiring a mage around to enchant them. Some substances could easily have magic in them innately - dragon bones, etc. I'm looking at something like was in EverQuest, with creating mana in a bottle the way Enchanters did in the MMOG, which then is used in trades for enchanted products or activating enchanted potential in materials

This is a great point, and I think its worth considering finding a way for lower end stuff to scale down better. If all you play is Champions, then its no problem, you're knocking down buildings anyway. But Fantasy Hero, I found many of the most interesting spells were the cheapest - but some concepts were not worth it because of the cost. Why does Flash Defense vs Taste cost the same as vs Sight? Why does Clairsentience with smell cost the same as with sight? There's little stuff like that which could be tweaked, I think.

5 points is enough for this, in my opinion. Its why some builds don't work in Hero; you try to simulate them and they end up just being nonsense.

Jeweler is probably the focus, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to work it into a player tradeskill as opposed to just a job. I mean, I could put janitor into the book but it has no bearing on player characters. What I might work up is something like sockets in Blizzard games; small augments you can add to items

This is turning out to be sort of a self-solving problem. As I work up each trade skill and create the fantasy materials in the world, the trades are creating themselves. You can make armor out of Dragon's bones, but that's not really blacksmithing, it falls better under stonework. And you need leather and cloth to make armor. And the leatherworker needs woodworking for parts, and so on...

Its less useful in personal builds (although there are people who hate rolling low so badly that its worth the points to avoid it), but very useful for stuff like magic items. That sword that never rolls low is really nice, that energy blast for PowerBlastDude, less so. Other genres: learn to love them too

I think an advantage that adds +1 to the minimum you roll on each die would be a useful addition: your d6 becomes 2-6 rather than 1-6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) for +1/4. Each +1/4 increases that one (3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6). The average doesn't change much, but you won't get low rolls.