Justin

Re: Opposite Schools of Magic

Depends on what you wanted to do.

Karma's got some great ideas, but there are other alternatives, such as having the effects be defined as "unpredictable" when one school of magic attempts to affect a spell from a different school. You could either have a random effect (roll on a chart or GM fiat), "real physics" logic (ice is vulnerable to heat, but it takes a long time to transmit heat through ice, so maybe the vulnerability is mitigated), or whatever you wish. Personally I like the "random effect" idea, but if your players arn't comfortable with the idea, you might end up with the peasants revolting.

Re: "Normals" gaining superpowers: how would they change in terms of mentality?

5. The ability to alter luck to their benefit.

 

Now this is a power that I would like to have! Consider: I’m about to be in a horrific car accident that normally I wouldn’t be able to avoid. With this power, I would be able to swerve my car out of the way just in time and avoid the crash. This is a very handy power to have. I would not go insane even if the power got stuck in the ‘On’ position. Personally, I’d never turn this power off.

Eww. All I could think was "And what if your good luck came at the expense of those around you?" That would be a quick trip to the room with padded wallpaper for me.

Re: HEROEs of Athas

To begin with I want to examine one of these as a bit of an experiment: For the martial tree there is an easy point to determine a couple of branches' date=' between ranged and melee combat. One thing I've been giving some thought to lately is that there is very little need to specialize between ranged and melee combat. OCV applies equally to both and weapon familiarity is cheap enough (even with some of the optional weapons familiarity costs suggested in Fantasy Hero) that there is no real disincentive to buy familiarity in both melee and ranged weapons and really be equally effective with both barring talents that favor one over the other. If the martial tree has separate branches for melee and ranged combat that would force more specialization so that a character who takes power in both will not advance as quickly in either as a character who specializes in one. (These thought are rough at this point but I want to capture them and solicit feedback before progressing very far.)[/quote']

 

It looks like what you are constructing is a Martial Arts framework. That might be a good place to start looking for the actual structure of the talent trees. You might also wish to look at the various Schools of Magic that require a certain amount of points in one level of the School before you can spend any points in the next level of the school.

 

I think the biggest technical problem I would have with such a structure is that in Hero, skill advancement is cheap and open-ended; in D&D and other level-based games, skill advancement is a lot more regimented and expensive. Talent trees remove a lot of the open-ended-ness (if that's a word), and while the decision to do so is up to the GM, technically it would be a major pain in the neck to accomplish.

Re: The Scroll Maker's Shop

An Unlucky result means the searcher stumbled upon a cursed scroll

Cursed scrolls, eh?

Scroll of the Unspeakable

4D6 Suppress Language Skills (40); Limitations: 1 Continuing Charge, Charge lasts one day, Charge never recovers (-1 3/4), OAF Scroll (-1), Extra Time (1 Turn Post Phase 12, -1 1/4), Incantations (Scroll must be read aloud; -1/4), Concentration (1/2 DCV; -1/4), Only applies to speaking (does not apply to understanding or reading, -1/2).

Real cost: 7

This scroll, the bane of magic users, bards, politicians, and public figures the world around, reduces an otherwise eloquent speaker to sounding like a babbling idiot. For one day, the victim of this scroll cannot make any intelligible speech: he can still understand other people, he can write instructions, and he can gesture, but he cannot speak coherently: all vocal effort is incomprehensible by any listener.

You could probably afford to drop the real cost by tacking on a few more limitations, but this gets the idea across.

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

Magic can make certain wagons dimensionally transcendental -- bigger inside than out.

Sounds like a (insert game name, you know which one) Portable Hole, or a Tardis--or, truth to tell, my son's closet. There is no way in heck he packs all that junk into that little bitty closet.

I like Narf's work-up, but every time I see something like this, the "Evil GM" lobe of my brain starts working overtime. What happens if the magic is dispelled or the wagon is destroyed? Is everything dumped unceremonially on the ground? Do the contents of the wagon disappear into the pocket dimension? For maximum evil, I could even require an inventory of the wagon and state that D100% of the contents are destroyed. (My players are packrats--there would be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.)

Re: Creature conversions - anyone interested?

This all looks like 4th Edition HERO material. Is that the case?

Even older--I'd originally written them up as 3rd Ed. Fuzion/4th Ed didn't kick my trigger, and while I don't have 5th ed yet (it's on my Christmas request list), a friend bought me a copy of HD. I've been playing with it for a while, but I'm still catching up.

Wow' date=' you're using a very, very old version of the Aboleth.[/quote']

 

Yup. This is based off the aboleth of the hardcover Monstrous Manual (AD&D 2nd Ed). I wanted the characters off in the Aboleth's city for a while, but I didn't want them permanently transformed into skum. Once the gaming budget opens up some (we're moving into a house, so the budget is on a severe crunch), I'll be looking into more recent sources.

 

Side note: what's really sick and twisted is I have almost as much fun playing with the conversions as gaming.

Re: Creature conversions - anyone interested?

OK, here we go.

Aboleth: I use aboleth as a "major bad guy" in one of my plot-directed campaigns--similar to the Drow in AD&D's "Giants, Drow, Lolth" series of modules.

Agathion: Think "Angels" from Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology. They are Servant Spirits that can manifest as any sentient race of the campaign world.

Note: References to "Tanis" in these sheets is a reference to my campaign world.

Re: Creature conversions - anyone interested?

I'll hopefully start getting them posted this weekend--we're in the middle of moving to a new house, so both internet access and "copious free time" are in short supply. And Michael, I'll definitely be submitting them to you, with many thanks.

Re: Creature conversions - anyone interested?

Cool! I knew my stuff would run the risk of redundancy, but (as you say) there's always room for more!

And you have a link for Surbrook's stuff! (I've been away from gaming for a while and had forgotten about him!)

I tried looking for this in the forum, but couldn't find any old discussions on the topic. If I've missed something, let me know.

I know Hierax has a few xD&D "monster" conversions on his website, but I was wondering if anyone was interested in other things beyond the Beastiary? I currently have Aboleth, Beholder, Behir, and a couple dozen others made up that I use in my FH campaign. They were 3rd Ed, but I'm working on converting to 5th Ed (there's not much difference, but I want to make sure all the Is are dotted and the Ts crossed). And if people are interested, should I upload them here or set them up on a website?

LEGAL STUFF: The above creature names are probably copyright WOTC. Hero system stuff is copyright Haro Games. My stuff is a fan produced work, and no intent to intrude on the copyrights of anyone is intended.

Re: Bizarre Song Ideas

I couldn't resist reposting this....

 

Everybody Must Get Stunned

Adding some Rep for seeing filk on my first day here!