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Shoug

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Posts posted by Shoug

  1. 11 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

    Yes but you meed to know how to yes the tools. I’ m not bashing Hero but everytime some one points out the flaws of (especially) D&D and say Hero is better never really look at the issue and see if Hero really is easier or does Hero just have the issue but from another angle or a different set? Like Ild man upthread was saying how much easier is it to build a character you want than searching multi classes and feats. Probably depending on what you want. If Hero is so easy why are there so many How do I? Question are on this site? 

    At its very root, Hero is a much easier game to tweak than any other, I'd say. But that doesn't mean the book, and I'm refering to the 6e books because those are the only ones I have, aren't lethally confusing. I don't mean that the layout is especially bad or anything like that, there's just way too much fancy bologna going on in Hero system to wrap your brain around as a new player. Things like the Follower perk and multipowers are extremely unintuitive, seemingly creating character points out of thin air; Talents that simply do things outside the otherwise intuitive powers and characteristics systems; Trying to figure out exactly what should be paid for with character points, where does one draw the line between mere possessions and fundamental aspects of one's character, how are we meant to make those distinctions on the fly. ETC. I have been in love with Hero for a few years now, but only distantly. I've never actually played because of running into confusions like this, despite buying several books. Hero demands an enormous amount of gaming wisdom be afforded up front, and if you don't have much experience with actual play, like myself and my brother, it's prohibitively difficult to understand.

  2. 11 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

    Subscription model?

     

     

    Print screen.

    Print screen.

    Print screen.

    Print screen.

    The biggest advantage of the subscription model is convenience and comprehensivity. Nobody who values those things (read: the people who are going to be subscribing to these services) is going to copy out materials. These are literally the opposite types of players. It's probably a super great deal for nerds patient enough to hand copy their own materials.

     

    On 1/10/2023 at 11:19 AM, Old Man said:

    Exactly this.  Hero's fatal flaw has always been the perceived learning curve.  The difficulty is that if you put out something with preconstructed characters and powers to lower the barrier to entry, you're also hiding the flexibility that is Hero's killer app.  Which is probably why we've never really seen a truly pick-up-and-play Hero game, just settings and the occasional rules revision.  Fantasy Hero hasn't had a definitive mechanic for healing in thirty years FFS.

     Hero's fatal flaw isn't the perceived learning curve, it's the frontloading of all of the creative work on top of the learning curve. It's not even really a game, it's a game system. A system that lets you (read: requires that you) define all the basic assumptions and parameters of your game before you can even start character creation. You've got to learn the game so you can make the game so you can finally play the game.

  3. On 12/8/2022 at 3:16 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

    The biggest flaws in any game come from trying to "balance" things.  Just no.  Get them reasonably close, and then let the GM balance things with the encounters, adventures and scenarios they create.  So the warriors are more powerful than the mages?  Run games that allow the strengths of the mages to shine.  Let everyone have their big moment and struggles.


    This is not a MMOG where you have to worry about PVP and one class having it too easy while another struggles facing the same pre-programmed series of encounters and locations.  There's an actual human in charge who can adapt the game to what is in it.

    This isn't only the job of the GM. Fate Core said it best, "Both players and gamemasters have a secondary job: Make everyone around you look awesome!" It's everybody's responsibility to be looking out for ways to make every player at the table feel like their character has a place in the story.

  4. On 2/10/2021 at 2:10 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

    I like completely disunified powers, magic is not science is not mysticism is not chi is not etc.  Science cannot figure out or do magic or vice versa

    I completely agree with this, and it extends all the way to my fantasy worldbuilding. Magic is in the world, the reality is a magical one. Players who want to seem like "Wizards" or "Magicians" will have to interact with a multitude of unique elements deliberately.

  5. On 9/9/2020 at 11:24 PM, pawsplay said:

    Probably the most realistic depiction of heavy armor would be that it costs END in some fashion. But I want to draw back a bit... STR 20 isn't reasonably strong, that person is strong even by the standard of knights and mercenaries.

    20 STR is stronger than almost everybody who's ever lived. It's extremely close to the absolute upper limit of human strength. I don't think any ancient person lacking hormone therapy and a modern understanding of nutrition can achieve 20 STR without being an extreme anomaly, standing so far outside the bell curve that they could never get armor without it being specially made for them.

     

    On 8/20/2020 at 7:40 AM, ScottishFox said:

     

    Even just the TMA and MMA training I've done and the limited armor those arts come with were enough to cause a penalty, imo.  We're talking just a few pounds of material, but it restricts movement and contributes immediately to over-heating and fatigue.  I don't see someone in 40kg of gear (gambeson + layers of armor) not suffering movement, DCV and END penalties.

     

    We could probably quibble at length over how severe those penalties should be, but I'm confident the best answer isn't none. 

    I mean, what was the point of lightly armored skirmishing units if guys in field plate could run just as fast and just as far while being much safer doing so?

     

    The second issue I have with the penalty being effectively zero is game balance.  If plate armor has no draw backs then other options become a failed IQ test.  I like the lightly armored players to feel like they've made a valid choice that involves sacrificing some safety for increased mobility (which can be a great defense of its own) and the ability to fight longer before fatiguing.

    The drawbacks of armor need to be in END and social implication. In reality, armor is extremely effective. The END cost is significant, especially in hot weather, but it was not easy to penetrate plate armor. It couldn't be done with normal weapons. At all. There's no amount of striking with an edge that's gonna hurt somebody with armor on. You need more weight, you need hammers, picks, or to grapple them and slip a dagger in between the armor. Even then, it would have to be a sharp dagger pressed hard to penetrate the gambeson, and that's only if there's no chainmail. 

     

    The beautiful thing about Hero is that you get to choose how armor works in your campaign. If you want it to be a matter of aesthetics with some mechanical consequences, do that.

  6. 13 hours ago, Bobby said:

    I am looking for a group to join that plays online. I have run a couple of games of champions in the past, but I would really like to be able to play fantasy Hero.  I can do any edition, although I most prefer 6th. 
     

    Thanks!

    I would be interested in something like this. Do you do discord?

  7. 9 hours ago, Spence said:

     

    An short list

     

    For RPGLit or Lite novels I have been read (listened to)

    The Adventures on Brad series by Tao Wong.

    Eden’s Gate series by Edward Brody

     

    For Anime/Manga/Lite Novels the following series were decent:

    Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon? by Fujino Omori and Kunieda (horrible title for a decent story)

    Goblin Slayer by Kumo Kagyu, Kousuke Kurose and Noboru Kannatuki

    Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash by Ao Jyumonji and Eiri Shirai.

    Slayers by Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi.

    Record of Lodoss War by Ryo Mizuno and Akihiro Yamada

    The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk/The Sword of Uruk by Koichi Chigira

     

    Not Anime/Manga related but great for RPG’s

    Supers fiction

    Wearing the Cape by Marion G. Harmon

    H.E.R.O. by Kevin Rau (great concept on the supers side, but needs work on writing interpersonal relationships/romance.  I found myself skipping entire sections.)

     

    Monster Hunter genre:

    S-Squad series by William Meikle

     

    I know people here might be desensitized to this specific recommendation, but My Hero Academia is, IMHO, the finest superhero genre fiction in all the Lords' Realms. All Might is the best, most regal, most literally awesome "Superman" archetype ever manifested.

  8. On 7/29/2020 at 11:00 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

     If you aren't going to Homebrew everything. The everyone else neds to step up and  make "powered by Hero" types of books. And to "work" properly they need to be put together in an organized fashion for GMs, similar to how 5e D&D does it.  I am an artist, not a writer, much, so I'll have to leave that to others.  But I do believe in this modern age, there needs to be a bit more handholding.

    This is a fair assessment. I mean, I kinda like the way 6e supplemental material is structured from a spiritual standpoint, with categorized resources that remain relatively genre neutral. I think they fit the paradigm of the game well, "Here's a book that covers *all kinds of creatures* that your GM may want to use, here's one that covers all martial arts." 

     

    But I think you're completely right. I think Hero is a game that depends on it's players to be confident gamers with solid experience and deep gaming wisdom. The GM has to hold all these complications that can have variable "frequencies" in his mind, and there's all kinds of Pandora's Box mechanics in the game that need to be used with caution and wisdom or they can get incredibly weird. Even Speed, one of the fundamental cool parts of the game, can't be used correctly without having a strong understanding of how disparities therein actually *feel.*

     

    I absolutely agree that, *if* relevance with a newer audience is a concern, simplification and content supplements are not the answer. *Stand alone games Powered by The Hero System* are the answer. If you already Grokk Hero System, these games will be transparent, narrowly focused genre supplements. But to the larval acolyte, these games must be opaque, shielding them from the vertigo of peering into the abyssal well of dark power that is the whole, unbridled Hero System. The core 6e volumes should be referenced only within the introductory or conclusory texts of the game book as "The toolkit that will unlock omnipotent homebrewing capabilities," never as a required or even an optional reference manual for actually playing the game. It should stand on it's own two legs, and prove the fun that is possible with the Hero System as a "Game" and not a "System."

     

     

  9. 10 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

     

    Or if you want to play a fantasy game but don't want to learn a whole new system.  

     

     

    It doesn't have to be.  I say this over and over again, but it doesn't have to be!  

     

    If all we present is the "homebrew everything" approach, which we've done for 31 years, we're going to find ourselves losing people, which we've been doing for at least 21 years.  

     

    And no, "dumbing it down" isn't the only alternative to "homebrew everything".  There's a massive excluded middle.  

     

    And not wanting to homebrew everything isn't a result of video games giving people the attention spans of overcaffeinated squirrels.  It's a result of growing up and having more responsibilities and less time.  

     

    (Shoug, I'm not trying to imply you've said any of the above, but those are all objections I've seen raised when I've tried to say: we don't need to homebrew everything!)

     

    "Homebrew everything" is just the impression I got by reading the rulebook of the game. Like, the nature of Advantages and Limitations reinforces the concept that players and the GM are really designing the mechanics by which their characters and world will function. The distinction between mechanics and SFX, a cornerstone behavior of homebrewers (which Hero makes an explicit intention of its design), further demonstrates this concept. That there are more materials out there that change the spirit of the game isn't obvious to people like me who just bought the most up to date core rulebooks and started reading.

  10. On 6/27/2020 at 4:32 PM, Michael Hopcroft said:

    That said, it is also "the tool to make the tools" when it comes to HERO in general.

    This is the whole strength of Hero. If you're just gonna run straight fantasy, play Burning Wheel. If you're running straight sci-fi space opera, run Traveler. If you want to run both at some point, in your own carefully built settings, Hero is for you. Hero is really a system for GMs that normally homebrew everything. It's the mechanics for designing your own mechanics.

  11. On 6/28/2020 at 4:37 AM, Doc Democracy said:

     

    No more evidence than you have that any such game reliably utilises interruptable magic. 

     

    Not going to engage further, you might be only the second person I block in a couple of decades on the boards. 

     

    I'm sorry, but he does have evidence. He's not being pedantic or mean, he actually has evidence that the OP is asking an answerable question about RAW. I run into this all the time as a fresh Hero player. Inconsistent answers to what I think are straightforward rules questions. It's as though the game does not have rules at times. Besides, as far as I can tell, uninteruptability is as close to a houserule as is possible achievable in Hero. Everything in the game has built in special counters, "hard counters" in video game lingo. Any power can be Dispelled, and conversely any character can have Power Defenses to protect them from that. There's Normal Damage and Killing Damage, Normal Defense and Resistant Defenses. There's Penetrating and there's Hardened. Everything absolute like Desolidification and NND requires an SFX be specified that just defeats it. It's basic comic book protocol that things escalate in this way, that Superman has a special weakness to kryptonite, or that for one episode there is something that can resist Cyclopse's beam. And while we're not necessarily talking about superhero games, this etiquette is woven into the *actual rules of the game, the ones written in the book I bought, the ones I'm reading and trying to use.* 

     

    So questions like, "how does interrupting a power using gestures and incantations work", questions that *do have answers*, should be answered first correctly, and then with the caveat, "If this isn't how you'd like it to work, feel free to take off Gestures and/or Incantations and just RP those things as SFX. This way it will take a timely Dispel to counter a spell, and not just any held attack action." I agree with Gnome-body here, this isn't a question of how things could be, it's a question of how the rules work as written.

     

    I don't know why everybody assumes that people using the most flexible and toolkit-y system ever created are probably using house rules too. I have a deep love of systems and rules and the games they produce, Hero is more of a homebrew creation system then a game, it makes no sense that I would bend the rules when they're already so fluid. If I'm just making things up, I'm gonna play an easier game to do that in, like Fate or The Fantasy Trip, games with fewer interconnected systems that I have to worry about.

  12. On 6/17/2020 at 1:49 PM, DusterBoy said:

    @pawsplay lol

     

    Also, in Dark Champions, STR 15 is the minimum for Navy SEALs, which makes sense, given the need foe exceptional upper body strength in the Teams.

    I would please the minimum of strength closer to 12-3 for a navy seal. As I said, 15 is an enormous individual, not just a "strong" one. No navy seal ever has had 19 or more strength. They excel in other areas, like End and Rec, Spd and Dex, sure, but in terms of sheer strength, I would call 15 a generous average, not a minimum.

  13. On 5/19/2020 at 12:44 PM, DusterBoy said:

     

    A classic case of "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" methinks.

     

    Stats beyond 20 are best left to non-humans, unless it's a superhero like Conan. And that probably represents him at the end of his career, as it were. People like that should be famous because of their preternatural Strength, because it's so far outside the norm. It's like Julius Hafthor Bjornsson, who is famous because he broke an endurance strength record that had stood for a 1000 years, and broke the back of the man who set the record, back in Viking times. You can search for the footage on Youtube.

    As a strength enthusiast, realism doesn't really come into the game in terms of strength. The nature of strength and strength tasks is so complicated, it's best to just let it be simple. I tried to create a table for Hero before that created realistic behaviors, and it turned out to be impossible to figure out. I was trying to figure out carrying ability, based on where on their bodies they could set the weight and how well they could grip the object. It just turned into a nightmare, it wasn't worth it. It is best left abstract. What I would do is just give players beneficial modifiers for properly roleplaying the use of their strength, and maybe use some kind " wieldiness" property to items that multiplies the strength requirement to deal with them (a fridge is wieldiness 2, double it's weight for max lift; a car is wieldiness 3) in the normal way (only do this if you desire realistic-ish strength).

     

    All you need to know is that, on paper, the strongest men who have ever lived are STR 20. On paper, it's now like 23, but the way throwing and carrying works, it's more like 20, and even then that's too high for certain tasks. If you have STR 25, your character is unbelievably more strong than the upper human limit. He is an enigma to modern strength sport, a veritable superhuman ultrabeing. He is likely 3 meters tall and weighs a half tonne. He is as strong as the legendry of Angus McAskil, but probably much stronger than the actual man. Also keep in mind that STR 15 is pretty much only for strength athletes or enormously naturally strong individuals like a tall and fat Samoan who played football in highschool. Only if you're into realism, maybe for a single campaign or something.

  14. 7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

    That’s great but i asked before what other media have this been done in for examples? The Witcher and Jedis/Sith are two I can think off. Is there others? Or any game which did buck the trend? I’m not trying to bring up the class system argument just looking for examples of a classless game.

    It's worth mentioning that many classless systems actually do have classes in the form of specialization. They're classless only in name, encouraging you to find your class organically over time rather than choose at the start.

  15. 4 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

     

    Someone brought up Gandalf a few pages ago as an example of an overly powerful wizard, and I forgot to point it out then: we almost never see him actually use magic! It's been too long since I've read the books, but the movies show him use magic maybe 4 times that I can think of off the top of my head. We also see him in a lot of combat with his staff and a sword. So he is a perfect example of a character with no class. (Heh. Makes me think of my favorite Fat Albert joke: you're just like school in the summertime . . . no class). 

     

    I say this to point out that I think we're trained to see "classes" when they quite probably aren't actually there in the literature and media. Gandalf is just a really old, wise guy who's good at lore and has picked a lot of life skills. Just like anyone else, really. We've all been Dungeons & Dragons-ified to some degree. The more good examples we can remember, the better we can break that convention!

    Eh, Gandalf is explicitly described as being a wizard, of which only 3 remain. Cosmologically speaking, wizards are incredibly unique, demi-angelic superbeings.

  16. 11 hours ago, mallet said:

    If you were creating the whole world from scratch maybe you would create it with the rule that all powers/special abilities must be built using an Endurance Reserve to power them, this would be their "Chi". Then this character's drain would be on that Endurance Reserve, not the powers themselves. 

     

    *Note: The only Avatar I've seen involved blue aliens. 

    Avatar the Last Airbender is one of the greatest artistic achievements of all of fiction penned by all of mankind.

  17. I've been toying with an idea for a houserule I'm going to try to make death a little easier to avoid (just in case). Basically, after damage is dealt and it is lethal you may instantly heal 1d6 for every 10 points of complications you take. These complications augment your existing matching complications. You can have no more Injury Complilcations than would cost more than half of what your starting matching complications costed. If you left some matching complication points on the table during character creation, these can serve as a buffer for your max Injury Complications total (if you didn't buy 10 of your allotted matching complications, then you get 10 "Injury Save Points" for free, basically). I feel like this makes forgoing some complications at the start not as painful, which I appreciate as many players can become really stuck if they can't think of good complications to take but they don't want to leave points on the table. It also makes death a little bit less likely, but at a fairly major cost. 

    Ways this could manifest include things like severed limbs, nerve damage, PTSD with a variety of symptoms, damage to a sense organ, etc. I think I'm gonna give it a shot.

  18. 12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

     

    I'm assume this means you've never had anyone use their STR to something more creative than bop another character. 

     

     

     

    What does a Secret Identity cost, because I've got players that pull that shtick all the time. " of course, it won't be Batgirl;  I'll be there as Barbara Gordon...." 

     

    Si what should I charge them for having a secret identity?

     

     

     

     

    To do _what_ himself as a bird? 

     

    I think there's an answer to that, and it's a boatload cheaper tha than the current Shapeshift (and if I remember correctly, the odds of failure are identical, and even using the same perception--type mechanic!   Makes you wonder why someone might pay fifty and more points to buy a much more expensive and no more effective version of that. 

     

    If only I could remember what it was called...    :lol:

     

     

    In all seriousness, though, when has changing shape been its own goal in any of your games?   More clearly: when has the purpose of changing shape ever been nothing but assuming a new shape? 

    In the only other game I play, TFT, being able to appear to be a bird is called Glamor and it's an expensive, high level spell. Shapeshifting has never been an everyman ability in any game I've ever played, I don't know why it would be one in Hero.

  19. 25 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

    Well I think a lot of folks are way to hung up on point costs and totals for non combat skills and powers.   For me, the combat is the heart of the game, and Non combat is what gives the combat flavor or context, so I am not tight about. The non combat in my mind has to be dealt with mainly with role play, and clever problem solving, and then get exacting and calculating for the combat. I really dislike stumping the players out of combat, because then the game bogs and people's attention wavers. So yeah, screw it, they figure it out that "birding around" gets them valuable intel and so they do it.

    Then the villain sitting in Stronghold tells a cel mate what happened, and maybe they can't do it the same way the next time. Or Doc Destroyer puts up a damage shield around his base that annihilated wildlife and any normal that blunders across it, but then they have a different problem to solve, next time, yes?

    I don't think it's fair, if any noncombat abilities have costs at all, that one should just be free. The ability to shapeshift is not unlike a disguise or invisibility or mind control or blahblahblah, etc. Sure, you don't like the fact that noncombat abilities have costs. But the fact of the matter is that they do in fact have costs. And shapeshifting is a powerful noncombat ability and shouldn't be free.

    As an aside, I completely disagree that non-combat abilites are given too much credence. In fact, I'd say they're given too little weight. I wish that costs alone could balance combat characters against noncombat characters, such that if somebody in my group got a bug up their butt to utterly slay all evil and took only CV, Defenses, SPD, RKA, they wouldn't make all the psychics and climbers feel like dumb idiots all the time. The points should produce a result that makes everybody glad about their purchases, and giving away flexible noncombat abilites that easily emulate the effects of multiple existing powers to all the Martials is gonna make everybody who bought invisibility or clairsentience feel like a chump for spending all the points the did. "Wait, so your'e telling me I could have just chosen for my character concept to be a completely clear man? It's part of his SFX, his visual appearance is transparency!" /s

  20. 19 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

    I'd say it is, if they paid points for a power. I'd limit disguise to having to  assume the character of another sentient (human) being. Assuming the shape is one thing, being "In character' is another.  As for animals, I'd give it a pass for the player gbeing clever and creative.  Once again Sparrow-man gains valuable reconnaissance for the rest of the team. by birding around the supervilains' fortress.


    I much prefer "rewarding creativity" than issuing "Thou shalt nots" to my players.  But then My mean and unpleasantness comes out at the beginning sessions, where I vet the prospective players, and if i feel something is amiss, I decline their participation. (My mean-ness appears in other manifestations, such as using DNPCs and the Authorities but that's often just to entertain myself. )

    I suppose I should consider the 6d6 a character does with his punch a reward for his creativity in using his fists on the enemy... /s

     

    I don't really consider, "Guys, we could easily sneak past/hide in plain sight if we were just birds instead of our normal characters. Later, we just turn back into our normal selves + all that useful information." so shrewd that any player deserves to be able to do it without paying for the ability to disguise himself as a bird somehow. 

  21. 6 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

    If I can become a wolf, those who know me as Chris the Human might not necessarily know me as Chris the Wolf, but I'm always going to be the same wolf.  If I can turn into a different wolf every time, that's qualitatively better than me turning into Chris the Wolf every time, thus worth points.  Plus, I don't think turning into a different wolf necessarily means someone might see through my not-Chris-ness; it would depend on how my power was defined, and how many points I paid for it.  (I would postulate that everyone has an "Everyman" Distinctive Features: Self for zero points.)

     

    I'm going to point back at the Skills analogy again.  Climbing is to Clinging as Concealment is to Invisibility as Disguise is to... something.  Regardless of what that "something" is called or how it's defined in game terms.  

    This is my point exactly. There has to be some sort of point cost for what is essentially "Superpowered disguise." It can't just be... free.

  22. 5 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

     

     

    On this we agree completely.

     

    The problem is that you spend upwards of fifty points on the new Shape Shift power if you want, and that same exact problem exists.  So why accept that you have to pay it at all?

     

    Don't get me wrong, I prefer the "It's all just SFX and Identities." way of doing things massively over multiform and shapeshift and whatnot. I'm just wondering what the point value of being able to fool others is. "Disguise" is a perfectly serviceable answer, but "You should be able to look like whatever you want whenever you want, it's all just SFX," is not. The reason somebody could always look closer at you and find out that you're really *not* a fly or a cyborg or whatever to me seems valid, because the idea is that you are only what you are. You aren't whatever you want whenever you want, you have to choose who you're playing as at the start. It can't cost nothing to be able to just... morph into something else such that nobody knows what you are anymore. Like, you can't just say, "I'm a shapeshifter." and then just buy any powers and stuff that you want, because you can always contrive a form that makes the power make sense. That's like... bypassing having a character concept. You're like, "Instead of having a character concept, I'm just gonna buy whatever mechanics I want, and then when I need to use them I will change my character into something that would have those mechanics, and nobody will know that I'm capable of anything else, because no matter how they look at me, I'll convincingly be whatever form I have chosen.

    The thing is, I would also be fine with that, if you took everything about those statements at face value. Say you wanted to shapeshift into a fly, so you take shrinking, and say "Only when in appropriate form." and then just become a fly. But I would make that player *roleplay* as a fly if he wanted people looking at him to only see a fly, thus trapping him in fly form for all eternity. And if he wanted to "become a fly, but retain his human consciousness," I would make onlookers see "A fly with human consciousness," at a glance and become wary and suspicious. *But*, I would also allow a kind of "Pretending" roll, something like "Acting" or "Disguise" or both, which allows the player to convince onlookers that his character is something that it is not. Then I would impose modifiers to the pretending rolls based on how well his character sheet at the time resembles the thing he is trying to look like. So, for example, if he turned into a fly but didn't shrink (or lose PD, STR, etc. whatever), I would make him take a modifier so extreme for trying to pretend to be a fly that I wouldn't even allow a crit success. What I'm trying to say is, I would say, "No." But if he pretended to be a fly and also made himself look like one, shrunk, and gained flight, I would make the pretending roll very easy, almost impossible to fail. I don't know, that's one way it could be done.

  23. 16 hours ago, MechaniCat said:

    Really don't like Law vs. Chaos personally. Though I also remove Alignment from my games. It's definitely an improvement to remove the connection to ethics. If I had to implement some kind of alignment system I would rather use some sort of Yin/Yang or Creation/Destruction system. Some people grow the trees, some people burn them down to fertilize the forest and let it grow anew.

    What you have just described is a perfect example of chaos and order. You don't need to use DnD's silly worldbuilding and cumbersome, dated alignment system to include the themes of Chaos and Order and balance in your games. It's unlikely that you could avoid those themes in general, they're so fundamental to the human experience and story telling. Now, whether or not you explicitly talk about chaos and order during your games is a completely different matter. You absolutely don't have to do that, but if you do, there are a lot of awesome ways to do it that don't involve DnD's alignment. One could have a kind of "Chaos Luck" or "Order Luck" ability that pushes the situation into one of those directions. "Sow Chaos" could be used to start a riot that breaks up a police blockade, and "Sow Order" could be used to stop a tavern brawl. Alternatively, you could build Chaos and Order into the strata of your magic system, such that all fire magic is considered to be chaos magic and ice magic is considered  to be order magic (and so on). 

    Me and my friend used to roleplay mages called Ignar and Crynar who were brothers, each representing Chaos and Order, respectively. Ignar had access to chaos magic, which was primarily centered around fire, upset, and in general beginning chain reactions with wide spread consequences. Crynar had access to order magic, which was centered around ice, control, and in general cleaning up the messes Ignar would create. Ignar was a kleptomanic psychopath, and Crynar was an autistic control freak, and it was a lot of fun.

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