sentry0

I'm designing a magic system (fairly standard suff; no frameworks, foci, gestures, incantations, etc) and spells are coming in around 12 real cost on average, all in.  Some magic systems (like The Turakian Age) will take that real cost and divide it by some number, let's say 3.

I honestly cannot decide if I want to do this or not, I'm of two minds on the subject.  Part of me says not to do it because magic is potent and someone who can shoot fireballs at will shouldn't get a point break for it.  On the opposite side, I feel like spells may be a bit too expensive and spellcasters will end up feeling shallow compared to the source material as a result.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Give magic users a point break or not?  What worked for you in the past?

My money is on ninjas.

29 minutes ago, Spence said:

The primary failure is game/world/adventure generation. 

Agreed.  We are also definitely not talking about the same thing 😁. I sincerely hope the Hall of Champions program helps alleviate some of the pain of setting up a campaign by providing interesting settings and canned adventures.  Honestly, we have no one but ourselves to blame now that the gates are open to us.

I also am a member of a Meetup group that runs weekly mini-cons and I've noticed that the 5e tables always fill up first.  The non-5e tables?  Good luck with that.  That's sort of the problem with the hobby, the vast majority of people are only interested in playing D&D.   Critical Roll is a big factor I think... people think that playing D&D is like that.

Unpopular Opinion: the hobby is currently in a bubble that will burst.  All the hipsters will run with their hands above their heads back to their craft breweries as they await the next trend.  Calling it now 😝

32 minutes ago, MrAgdesh said:

D&D is just really easy to pick up and play (5E is anyway, and the last time I played was 1st Ed AD&D). Hero isn't.

Is it?  

I play in a weekly D&D 5e game and it's anything but fast playing and easy to learn.  There are many, many rules, dice, and exceptions to rules just to make it appear to work.

Where D&D shines is the ease of making a level 1 character.  Once you get a few levels and archetypes, features, and spell slots come into play it frankly becomes a mess of horribly balanced spells, feats, and exercises in accounting.  I play a simple Fighter (Cavalier) without spells or flashy abilities and I'm super underpowered compared to everyone in the group.  My choice, but someone needs to take the hit.

HERO, in comparison, has a painful character creation process rife with math.  It's so time consuming and error prone that we've been using computer programs to do it for decades.  Once you're in game, things are pretty straightforward I would argue.  At the very least I would assert it's no worse than modern D&D.

How about an AoE Flash with invisible power effects?

21 hours ago, KawangaKid said:

For us publishing newbies -- any recommended tools for creating & laying out PDFs?

You can do a lot with just a word processor... I created this PDF by writing a document in LibreOffice Writer (a free take on MS Word) and using their built in PDF converter.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Y5hufEqzSfmn5OfIU6QNsj1WW-spQJx8

It's probably a combination of a number of factors, some of which may be public and some not.

My personal take is that the most egregious issues are the total lack of marketing and the move away from selling in bricks and mortar stores. Word of mouth is still very important in the RPG scene and you can have the best system around but if no one knows about it, it won't matter.

50 minutes ago, Tywyll said:

I totally ❤️ your app....

Thanks 

If you're interesting in trying out the new version I can get you a link to download it.  I've been sort of blogging the development of the new app here - https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/98754-hero-system-mobile-20/

The app will work identically to the existing app, just reskinned.  You can also try the experimental feature I've been working on that loads a HeroDesigner file directly if you want.

So far so good... most of the feedback has been around how having an image attached to your character makes the character un-loadable.

I need to get back to this project but I've been busy with other IRL stuff.  Work has stopped but I intend on picking it back up soon.

Yay, this is very exciting... congrats on getting this put together.

I maintain one, check my sig for links.

That's a fascinating take on it Manic.

My first thought about it was amusement but it quickly turned to dread.  With the crazy popularity of D&D and by extension the RPG community there is a breaking point.  I actually wondered if this is the RPG scene jumping the shark.

2 hours ago, Greywind said:

Because the rules don't allow it.

I think it's a fair question although somewhat hyperbolically stated.  There has to be a cutoff point between what makes sense (which is highly open to interpretation) and what doesn't and what costs points.  The Power skill seems like a good fit as designed for one-off power stunts with the caveat that if a character continues to use the same stunt over and over they should really buy the power.

6 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I wonder how that works.  Wikipedia has a TON of their media all over the map and spell list pages.

It's probably looked at as free advertising for the company I would suspect.  I'm sure if they were to send a take down notice Wikipedia would comply, not sure how many companies would be interested in doing that though.

To answer your question directly I would rather go down the VPP route with a small VPP with heavy lims like not useable in combat.  That's essentially what you would be turning the Power skill into but for a cheaper cost.

I think there was an example of that in the Champions Complete book.  Going from memory I think it was something like Change Environment or a minor Transform that was used to clean an area.

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

That's an interesting idea, but I'm sure I'd have to contact Obsidian Entertainment to even start to get that ball rolling if it's going to be a sold product.

 

I might just for sh*ts and giggles, but I'm leaning towards a home brew effort.

 

 

There are plenty of fan made conversions and adaptations in the download section.  Perhaps you could offer it up as such?

Any chance you you would consider doing a module style write up, complete with pre-gens?

I know it would be a lot of work but I ask because playable modules seem to be an identified gap for the HERO System. 

My rule of thumb is powers do not require an attack roll against an unresisting target.

It's only if the target is resisting your power that an attack roll may be required.

1 hour ago, dsatow said:

 

LOL, I remember when 5e was out, people complained about 5e saying it should just go back to 4e.

People on these boards love to rip on edition x because, reasons.  Truthfully, it usually just boils down to personal preference... at the risk of sounding like a hippy I will say live and let live.

Or to put it another way, it's highly unlikely that you ripping on an edition because you personally don't like feature x or y will change someone's opinion.  In fact it's more likely to have the opposite effect.  By all means though tells us all again about how hideous the damage shield rules are because that's going to be the critical flaw in 6th edition that will send those users into a book burning frenzy 🙄

5 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

INT 12 = genius. 

I know, I know.  I didn't claim it was perfect just following the conventions set forth by the founding fathers.

5 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

How are you deriving that number?  140 is quite exceptional.  Much higher puts you at the practical human limit minus a handful of "legendary" people.

 

140 IQ puts you in the top 99.3790320141% of the population almost top 1 of 200 people.

160 IQ puts you in the top 1 of 10,000 people.

180 IQ puts you in the top 1 of 3,000,000 people.

200 IQ is top 1 in 2,000,000,000+ people.  Like 3-4 on the planet.

 

Given the older style descriptions where people begin to describe you as a thing around 13-15 (he's strong, she's smart, etc.) and where you start to dominate your respective field of endeavor around 18 and are among the best in the world at 20+.

I'm taking 100 points as the base which may or may not be accurate as a base.  Using the HERO standard of doubling every 5 points that means +20 points if IQ per point of INT. 

It was napkin math 😁

8 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah when I see this kind of complaint, my response is "find a way to make INT work better" not "mess everything else up"

You could make a case that each point if INT will net you a higher IQ.  Someone with a 12 INT would have roughly a 140 IQ which I think puts them in the in the Very Superior category of some IQ scales.  Although this has no official game effect it does help put things into perspective.

Personally, I'm fine with writing it off as a system outlier and moving on.

Just now, Psillias said:

So a limitation of an activation roll for the second half of the compound power then?

I think so.

What was the original chance of it activating?  Like was it a 5 or greater on a d20 roll?

Maybe an Activation roll at 17-.  It should equal the same chance of failure at 0.46%.