bjbrown

Edited: Completely removed because I didn't read carefully and provided a detailed answer to a question that no one asked.

The best thing to do is not necessarily focus on the actual number of spells per sphere. If you want each sphere to be fairly self-sufficient, then each sphere should cover the basics that almost every spell-caster would want.

I think the general categories are: attack, defense, movement, and information (including sensory). You should probably aim for one to two spells in each of those categories. Then fill out the the spheres with spells that make the spheres unique. So maybe Empathy has the Mental Powers, Storm might have Change Environment and then a spell variations with area of effect, and things like that. The result is that no sphere leaves a character without a spell that he needs, but each sphere is different enough to make choice between the spheres meaningful.

That would be slightly different than the magic system in my Fantasy Hero game- which is somewhat a low magic game. Most of the spheres of magic in my game have one important category of spell (attack, defense, movement, information) left out, so any character who wants enough magic to do everything will need at least two spheres.

There's always the play-by-email / play-by-bulletin board / play-by-mud option. Not as good as playing in person, but a passable substitute if you can't find anything else.

If you haven't checked out Fantasy Hero Fifth Edition yet, it includes example magic systems based on Power Skills and/or Talents (e.g., the Arts Arcane, Lex Magisterium).

I don't think that a Major Transform is inappropriate here. One of the uses of Major Transform is creation of permanent objects. I don't think an ordinary sword, which could otherwise be bought in a store, is necessarily unbalancing. If the spell created Stormbringer, on the other hand, that would fall into the unbalancing category for creation of objects, and thus be inappropriate for a Major Transform.

Using some sort of counter (like poker chips) might be a good way of keeping track of money. Someone else on another thread posted an idea about putting equipment on cards for the players to hold on to. I might try both of these ideas.

BODY, END, and STUN are Drained only temporarily, like any other stat. The Drain description doesn't specify any exception for BODY, END, and STUN. You might be thinking of the rule that when a Drain kills someone (reduces a person below negative value in BODY) or breaks something (reduces a thing to zero BODY), in that case the BODY doesn't recover; the target is dead or destroyed.

I have players who are willing to engage in extensive and complex mathematical calculations to get the most possible effeciency regarding character points for powers, and yet find keeping track of money and equipment to be an unbearable chore. The D&D style of accounting has thus been abandoned against my will.

While I would prefer exacting bookkeeping from my players, I don't don't think that it's done a great deal of damage to the campaign. Well, except for the part where I ask, "Do you have a hundred gold pieces," and then they spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out which of them is supposed to keep track of the gold. But anyway, the characters are long past the point of struggling beginners. So depending on what I think is appropriate, either I take their word on what they insist they "should" have, or I enforce the rule that if it's not recorded on a piece of paper somewhere, it doesn't exist.

The accounting is probably appropriate for low-level campaigns. A higher power campaign, or one in a cinematic style, should probably rely more on perks and what seems reasonable.

I worry about encumbrance less too. One is for the reason described above as to the bookkeeping of my players. The other is that 5th Edition seems to allow characters to carry much, much more before suffering encumbrance penalties. Thus I don't worry about encumbrance unless what the players propose that their character's carry challenges what I think is reasonable. I apply separate DCV/Dex roll penalties based on armor type.

I meant to add to my last post- surely a noble could hire a steward to manage his estate while he's off adventuring. Nothing guarantees the steward's competence and honesty, however, and the adventurer may return home to find that it's all squandered.

The way you limit abuses for title perks is merely to always remember that there are consequences for actions.

A noble can order people all he wants, but when he asks people to do things like risk their lives or something else they really don't want to do, they will refuse or hide at the first instance or otherwise not do what they were ordered. If the noble develops a reputation for such behavior, the commoners are going to organize and sabatoge or kill him. (Remember, that's how revolutions are started- the commoners get fed up with the nobles and organize to do something about it.)

The ability to administer low justice usually comes from some higher authority, and if the character abuses it, the higher authority will take away the right to administer low justice and possibly punish the character. Low justice doesn't confer the privilige to ignore or make law, but to act as the judge and executioner, so to speak, to enact existing law. Knights who could adminster low justice were still bound by moral codes and fealty to the king in exercising that justice. In short, low justice isn't carte blanche to kill for fun or profit. License to kill is similar; Bond doesn't have a license to kill for the fun of it, he has a license to kill in the course of fulfilling his duty to his country.

Being above the law again has limits. As long as there are higher ranking nobles, they will reign in a character who embarasses them by flaunting their laws. You also have the same problem with disgruntled commoners; if a noble doesn't have to follow the law, then surely the commoners don't.

An order to surrender is useless in combat- when an opponent's life and liberty is at stake, following someone else's chain of command isn't particularly important.

Diplomatic immunity doesn't fully insulate a character from the law. While diplomatic immunity can save a character from prosecution from a specific crime, he can be kicked out of the host country. For a particularly awful crime, the character's native country might waive the character's diplomatic immunity and allow him to be tried in the host country anyway, to avoid an international incident.

A lot of these abuses are dealt with by simply remembering that those of lower rank have minds and emotions, and those of higher rank have an interest in maintaining order. An out-of-control noble is going to make a lot of enemies among the commoners, and is a threat to the upper nobility's chain of command. Both groups will act accordingly.

Small bonus to PRE-related abilities, and PRE attacks, are appropriate in certain situations. Being a noble definitely has to help in the High Society situation, for example. Noble rank might help with that order to surrender, if used in an appropriate fashion. "Surrender because I'm a noble," shouldn't work, but "If you surrender, I can guarantee you safe passage out of the country," could work (assuming the character has a reputation for being honest). PRE bonuses from noble rank should be treated like any roleplaying-based modifier- it only helps if the GM thinks it's used appropriately.

Since it seems that characters eventually become filthy rich over the course of adventuring in my Fantasy Hero campaign, I don't see that perk being much of a problem. A filthy rich character would have easy access to standard equipment, might get bonuses to Bribery rolls, and he could hire normal people to hold his codpiece. Money still doesn't buy things like magical items in my campaign, won't buy a follower, and regardless of Bribery, most important people are motivated by things other than money. So in my game, filthy rich wouldn't be a game-breaker.

Buy skill levels with Concealment, only usable vs. IR vision.

Roleplaying reasons should be good enough.

Adjusted characteristic maxima for each race comes with its own set of potential abuses. If a player wants a combat machine and get a point-break making that combat machine, he just chooses the race that gives the most point savings for high stats.

Without adjusted characteristic maxima for different races, at least everyone pays the same character points for their stats.

3-pt. Penalty Skill Levels may have Limitations on them.

Extra Limbs does not need to be bought multiple times for multiple limbs. Extra Limbs allows you to have any number of limbs. The extra limbs can be used to perform maneuvers, so I would say Extra Limbs would cover converting regular feet to monkey feet. The Extra Limbs should probably be Inherent. I don't think you should have to buy Extra Limbs more than once so you can have a limitation on just one of the limbs; pay for Extra Limbs without the Limitation, and merely define the tail as having limited manipulation.

I assume that "Gestures Throughout" is meant to simulate losing the use of hands for arm-wings, and in that case, it would no longer be a limitation given the monkey feet.

You don't need Clinging for him to hang upsidedown- Extra Limbs allows your feet to grasp an object in the same way human hands could grasp it. Only take Clinging if you want him to be harder to knock off while he's sleeping upsidedown.

There is a way in which the limitation value makes sense, when compared to "Only to Protect Against Limited Type of Attack" which is a -1 Limitation for Desolidification. Since Desolidification has more uses than avoiding damage, and the only use for Damage Redution is avoiding damage, then the same limitation is less limiting on Damage Reduction than on Desolidification.

So 50% Resistant Damage Reduction (30) with Limited Phenonemon (-½) would cost 20 real points. The equivalent of twice the effect (100% Resistant Damage Reduction) would be Desolidification (40), Reduced END: Zero (+½), Persistent (+½), Only to Protect Against Limited Type of Attack (-1), which is 40 real points. That's good consistent math within the 5th Edition rules.

On the other hand, I had previously thought that Damage Reduction for limited special effects would be in the -1 (common like fire) to -2 (uncommon like sonics) range. So maybe that means there isn't enough of a limitation for a limited type of damage on either Damage Reduction or Desolidifcation.

I'll add one more quick post, rather than editing my previous one yet again. I can see no reason why adding up dice takes so long for your group, unless your group is using hard-to-read dice. Normal sized white dice with black pips are the easiest to read and add, it seems to me. Small dice, dice with numbers instead of pips, and dice with low contract from pips or number to background are hard to read and thus hard to add. (Regular, classic dice are much easier to read than those d20 with small faces and translucent colors.) I'm no math genius, but adding dice is a trivial, very quick task.

When my group converted from AD&D to Hero, it seemed to us that combat took longer in Hero. A few years later, combat takes about the same amount of time that it used to take in AD&D. Why? Because I, the GM, had been playing AD&D for fifteen years and knew most of the rules by heart. After playing a few years, I have almost the same familiarity with Hero rules. Not perfect, but now I'm not looking up so much all of the time. Having played both, Hero combat is no more complex than AD&D- they seem to both have about the same number of modifiers to keep in mind and to keep things confusing.

By the way, the easiest way to speed up play of both Hero and AD&D is to (a) reduce the amount of combat as much as possible ( make the necessary combats small in scale (i.e., few characters on each side).

Dice:First, rolling 1d20 and applying modifiers is no faster than rolling 3d6 and applying multipliers. The slow part is not recognizing the number on the dice; the slow part is the adding and subtracting. I wouldn't recommend changing dice as a way of speeding things up.

I don't know if it's faster or not, but generally after rolling attack dice, the player announces what DCV the roll would hit. The chart on 5E 244 is helpful for this.

Speed:In dealing with Speed and going in order, one of my players develops a chart at the beginning of combat that orders both when the heros act and when the villains act. Now he just tells us who is next and goes down the line. That has speeded up that aspect of play a lot. Abandoning the Speed chart could have two problems. It could confuse some of the finer points of when things happen on segments (may not always be a problem), and it could give an advantage to high speed people who go at the end and take multiple actions without the opportunity for intervening actions from lower speed people (maybe not a problem if your game has a very small range of Speed). For my games, though, developing an order of combat list helps speed things along.

Damage: Separate BODY and STUN is one of the great advantages of the Hero system over the AD&D system in my perspective (knocking out someone without killing them- what a concept). Keeping track of two different kinds of damage does take a little bit longer, though for me it's worthwhile. Since the Hit Location chart is an optional rule, maybe you want to ditch that and use a standard rule that for Killing Attacks, Stun is x3 of the BODY rolled, and for Normal Attacks, BODY is 1 per die. Again, I happen to like the Hit Location Chart, but tossing that aside will actually save you some time.

Other: Don't use an AD&D style of spell casting which is based on having a lot of spells and memorizing the ones to carry. So much of our AD&D was wasted by the players with Spell Casters scrutinizing the details of their spell lists to decide what spells to memorize day-to-day. Also, don't use Activation or Requires Skill Roll for spells in Hero- rolling skill rolls for spells will slow down the game. Each of your players should read every page of rules and every FAQ question associated for any power their character possesses. Looking up rules takes up time, and there's no reason that players can't be responsible for knowing the rules for their own powers (and the GM needs to do a lot of reading of rules to be prepared for each game session). Finally, organized character sheets, including player-made charts of common information, speed up the game.

It sounds like you're trying to re-create Chain Lightning from Dungeons and Dragons. When converting spells from that game to Hero, keep in mind that AD&D magic was not very as balanced (or, at least, AD&D and Hero have different ways of balancing powers). Thus, while its possible to convert anything from AD&D to Hero, when you convert the more powerful AD&D spells you might run into situations in which an accurate conversion into Hero costs way more active or real points than acceptable.

That in mind, the Any Area advantage for the attack is probably your best bet. Increase the area until you have a the total hexes with which you are comfortable (or perhaps the most you can afford). Then, you can simulate some of the other Chain Lightning rules with limitations. "X targets no more than Y hexes apart with no intervening obstacles" might combine to be a -½ limitation, and losing a DC of effectiveness per target might be -½ (assuming that you have a reasonable chance of getting multiple targets and the DC will be down to around half by the last target). If you buy Any Area, you don't need Selective, since defining the area will select your targets. (Technically this leaves open the possibility that you could have two potential targets in the same hex, and not have the option of hitting one and avoiding the other- but this would be a rare case, and your GM would probably cut you a break on the situation based on the special effects of the spell.

Q: Can a character use Dispel to remove or cancel out the effects of a continuing-effect Mental Power?

Is the above question in the FAQ under Dispel, or somewhere else? I've read through the Dispel part of the FAQ twice and can't find it.

Dispel works fine. The FAQ merely clarifies that to dispel a mental effect, you have to roll against the active points of the effect like any other power.

After re-reading the Mental Powers section, I now understand specifically what you mean to do with the Mind Control. The limitation depends probably on how common mental powers are in the campaign. If mental powers are part of the standard, I'd say it's a -1 limitation- sort of like Mind Control for defensive use only. If mental powers are more rare, then perhaps the limitation gets higher.

Another way to create such a power would be Dispel with the Advantage Any One Power of a Special Effect: Mental.

Regardless of how high INT goes, it shouldn't be a substitute for spending points on skills.

If you want a character who can easily adapt to any skill, buy Cramming one or more times.

Intelligence measures ability to process information, and perception rolls are often made for characters to notice something inobvious, which sounds like processing information to me.

Animals and creatures with low intelligence and good senses of course have this simulated with Enhanced Senses. The bumbling genius could be simulated with a Disadvantage.

Your argument for CON makes some amount of sense, but you're still going to have situations in which a high CON character should have low perception, and cases in which a low CON character should have high perception. While INT doesn't necessarily perfectly correlate with the level of perception desired, no stat will.

Based on the way that INT and PER are defined, I think they fit pretty well. Also, another reason not to base PER on a stat like CON or DEX is that those stats already have so many combat benefits, additional benefits don't need to be associated with them. (Especially DEX- it's already useful enough.) My thoughts fall into the not broken, don't fix category.

On 5E pg. 202, under the description of Side Effects, there is a cautionary paragraph for allowing a Side Effects where the effects are easily erased (citing as an example "it's not much of a Limitation for a character to take BODY damage from a failed use of a power if he has Regeneration Healing").

I also wouldn't see taking damage as just the reverse of Healing. Healing permanently restores a lowered characteristic; the power that permanently lowers BODY is an RKA.

Though the Side Effect could be defined as a Drain rather than an RKA, the reason that I (if the GM in this case) would insist on the RKA rather than the Drain is that (a) if the power is an empathic-healing type power, the damage should have a permanent effect (RKA) rather than temporary (Drain), and ( because Drain potentially costs more in active points to get the same level of loss of BODY as RKA. One of the benefits of the power Drain over RKA is that Drain is applied against an exotic defense. In the context of a Side Effect, however, no defenses apply anyway. I would require the more cost-effective power to be a Side Effect. That's more of a preference, though, and and using a Drain is certainly within the rules.

I wouldn't start with Forgotten Realms and then decide what I wanted to modify. I would start with my own world, and then borrow from Forgotten Realms (and whatever other sources) as needed. It's a change in perspective- I think it's harder to fix what you don't like about one setting than to pull what you like from it.

My own current Fantasy Hero campaign is an original world to the extent that I devised the map for it and wrote some of the history for it. However, when I need distinctive culture for elves or dwarves, I don't write that myself- I use that material from the Complete Book of _____. Several organizations in my campaign are borrowed from the old Greyhawk setting and merely given different names. Many of the spells in AD&D have counterparts in my Fantasy Hero campaign (to the extent that active points allow). Whenever I need some sort of material that I don't want to take the time to write, I have an AD&D supplement to fill in the material.

Though I haven't actually played AD&D in a long time now, I can't imagine that players' reluctance to try a system other than AD&D would be based to attachment to a particular world setting. I would think it's fear of a new rule system. (The new lite version of the Hero System rules in the works should be helpful with recruiting players who play other systems.)