Toxxus

I love skill levels. It's one of the big differentiators between D&D and Fantasy Hero. At 20th level the D&D fighter is just as easy to hit as he was at level 1. He'll shrug off a dozen sword hits like they're nothing, but he'll get hit - a lot. A very high end Fantasy Hero character could have 6+ levels and much higher base OCV/DCV. Unless he's caught unawares he'll pick off every attack of the junior fighter. This works for me. I've dabbled extensively in martial arts over the years (even ended up in the August 1997 Black belt Magazine - Which I found out about in 2017 - thanks Google!) and this is what it feels like when you're fighting someone who's very, very good. They don't have god-like damage resistance. It's just that they can hit you whenever they want and you can't hit them back - at all.

He never even considered it since he planned to be walking around in plate armor. But, he chose an open face helm to avoid perception roll penalties and .... squish.

Even in a strange world with no campaign caps (which honestly I've never seen in 30+ years of RPGs) the multi-power character has a lot more utility in a wider variety of situations. In addition to the rock-paper-scissors thing mentioned earlier - they had access to heals, movement powers and other things that Mono Power Man or even Two Powers at Once Lass do not. I do appreciate the extensive answers though I think we're just going to end up disagreeing at this point.

Everything was working fine until the last update. I use it at least a couple times a week. Yesterday it stopped working.

In this scenario A has 9 powers to work with and B has two. Unless A chooses incredibly poorly they're going to be more useful than B in a wide array of scenarios. Another, scenario. Player B has Attack 1, Attack 2 and Defense 1. Player A using a MP has Attacks 1-9 and Defense 1. All of exactly the same points. It is incredibly unlikely that Player B is going to be more effective more often. Especially since Player A can take Player B's exact same powers and have 8 more attack options available. These could be enumerated, but unless you're building very unlikely scenarios you're going to end up with things like.... Player B Powers: 1- Fireball (AoE) 2- Firebolt (AP single-target) 3- Magic Armor spell Player A Powers: 1- Fireball (AoE) 2- Firebolt (AP single_target) 3- Magic Armor 4- Teleport 5- Cone of Cold 6- Hypnotic Pattern (AoE Mental Paralysis) 7- Life Support (AoE, Usable by Others) 8- Healing Spell 9- Call Lightning (indirect, single hex AoE) 10- Suggestion (Mind Control) These two players have spent exactly the same points only one player got 9 spells for the cost of 2 and other other player got 2. The multipower discount scheme is too effective, imo and verges on mandatory. It's not literally mandatory, but anyone trying to get the most bang for their buck will do this.

I frequently do this with magic items my player's characters find. Armor is rPD/rED. I don't bother with the limitations and point crunch beyond making sure they have a weight.

I'm having the same issue on my Android phone (Samsung Note 8). Last build makes character import busticated.

I may have been slightly overstating things to make a point, but if you're using fixed slots you get 9 powers for the cost of 2. Unless they are stupidly redundant you get a huge boost to your characters effectiveness compared to any other hero who has 2 or more powers. I guess it would be possible to have Mono-Power-Man out damage you by having a character with 1 offensive ability compared to your 9. But Mono-Power-Man is also much less useful in a variety of different scenarios. In classic D&D / Fantasy War Games there is a bit of a rock-paper-scissors thing going on with abilities / spells-vs-saving-throw-type / mobility vs armor / etc. Having the ability to have 9 abilities on call vs. the 2 of a non-MP-build of the same caliber is almost always better. Only the hypothetical Mono-Power-Man who plays in a capless environment (kinda rare, imo) fares better. So, I stand by the quoted text as being essentially true even if it won't hold up to a formal scientific dissection nor become one of the laws of HERO gaming.

The martial arts types in my Fantasy hero campaigns LOVE Combat Luck. You can enter a fight in pajamas and not get absolutely annihilated by the first arrow or axe that hits. Had an otherwise nearly invincible plate armor tank in our party take a short sword crit to the eyes (open helm) - 7 BOD doubled to 14 / 35 Stun - one shotted. He would have loved some Combat Luck too.

Yes, that's a pretty common campaign restriction. Nobody wants to deal with 6d6k AP guy in a Fantasy Hero game just because he came up with a way to afford it. I think I could get the costs where I like them by just forcing all multipower slots to be variable instead of fixed. That would at least make a broad multipower array somewhat painful point-wise. There was a flat divider approach I saw somewhere that is also pretty close to what I'm after. Basically the players do the spells/powers as singlets and whatever Real Cost they end up with they divide it again by 3 or 4 but no power frameworks are allowed.

That's really where the absurd cost effectiveness of the MP damages the game, imo. You can easily afford an AP for the heavy armor targets, Single Hex Accurate AoEs for the DCV monsters, large area AoEs for clearing hordes of trash mobs, OMCV based attacks to hit otherwise impervious enemies, etc. And usually you can get all of that and more for less than the price of just buying two attack powers.

I require a -1 level of limitations or higher in most cases. I prefer the standard magic user limitations of Incantation, Gesture, Extra Time (Full Phase), and Concentration. However, I wanted to leave some other play styles open. Ex: My wife's fire mage has the classic Incantation, Gesture, Full Phase limitations on all of her powers. If she's grabbed or smothered all of her magic is negated. Our resident Witcher has gestures and 2x endurance cost on everything. Endurance gates his ability use pretty hard. The guy playing Udyr has a complex weave of limitations that I hoisted from the video game he's based on (cool downs, active/passive abilities, turning on one stance cancels the passive of the previous, but not the active - for 2 phases - etc.). Building this right took me a couple of hours by itself. Our Dwarven Explosives expert has OAF, Expendable Foci that require a full phase to use. The 3rd to Last Airbender guy has gestures - both hands - and a couple other limitations that make it *feel* like a martial-arts-based magic system.

This can be part of it. Even if it's not the MP is just too damn good to pass up. My wife's fire mage has Fire Bolt (single-target RKA AP), Fire Ball (AoE RKA), Flash, Mind Control, Teleport and AoE Life Support built into her multipower all for less points than the first two would cost alone. She's substantially more useful in a larger variety of scenarios because of this. I converted a friend's D&D Bard character this week and similarly used a MP (two actually) for his various instant and constant spells. He got 18 spells for less than the cost of 4.

No idea, but whoever did the cover for Fantasy Hero 4th edition created one of my favorite scenes ever.

I've used a in-house armor stacking rule based on the Armor Chart being double weight per 2 rPD/rED. If your existing armor is equal to or more than 1/2 of the existing armor rating then you get +1 rPD/rED. EX: Character has Combat Luck and wants to wear Heavy Leather Armor (3 rPD/rED, 7 kg). Since the Heavy Leather Armor (3 rPD) is more than 1/2 of the rPD of Combat Luck the character gets to add 1 rPD/rED and gets a total of 4 rPD/rED. We find this keeps armor stacking from getting out of control while not allowing silly stacking like 5 t-shirts plus Combat Luck = ultra-light plate armor.

One thing I'm concerned with is multipowers. It just makes additional abilities/tricks TOO cheap. It's essentially a 90% discount on each additional item. Basically you get 9 additional options for the price of 1 additional option. I don't like that every character has one, but if they don't get one they're basically playing the "build your character" game poorly. Would you like 8 fewer moves than the other players for the same cost? Congrats - you've....succeeded? After everyone settles in I may go to a house-ruled flat division that gets somewhere between multipower and you can only afford 2-3 spells.

What I've noticed in my own campaigns is that at lower levels the mages are more utility than glass cannon as the damage available from gear, martial arts and skills out classes them. As the campaign progressives and the active point caps on abilities are raised it is not long before the wizard has the right attack for each scenario. My current Saturday campaign is at middling range (everyone is just under 200 character points now) and with the AP cap at 45 points she's definitely the party blaster. She has 2d6 RKA AP, 2d6 RKA AoE, 8d6 EB, 8d6 Sight Flash and the ability to teleport with up to 1 other person as her primary spells. Being able to switch so easily from AoE, to normal damage to Armor Piercing RKA for the guys in plate is a huge advantage. During our last session the players took out the enemy boss and only had to take out his two elite guards in full plate. Right then she had to take the kiddo to TKD class so her character teleports out of the scene. The rest of the party spends an HOUR wailing on the guys in full plate before they get them down. Anyway, back on topic, the main reason to have gear in Heroic campaigns is that it is such a classic piece of the experience. If you tell players they can't keep items they find because "points" you'll run into the same immersion shattering non-sense that D&D Adventurer's League started in Season 8 (this season) that caused about 30% of the community to walk off. * Did you find a magic item? You can't keep that. * Did you find mundane gear? You can't keep that either nor sell it for gold, but you can use it until the session ends. * Everyone earns a flat rate of income. Did you find a pile of gold with rubies on top? Can't keep that either. * The NPC wants to hire your for a mission of great daring and danger. In return they can offer you....nothing.

Darklands was amazing fun back in the day. I fondly recall having to do the witch battle with 3 players because you couldn't bring a 4 member party to that encounter w/out the game crashing. Until you got it patched.... Which required them to physically mail you a floppy disk...

That's pretty much what I was shooting for. The mage types all have AoE's which not only hit multiple opponents, but are often highly accurate since they're targeting DCV 3 hexes and not the higher defenses of individual targets. I also have a maximum combat effectiveness spreadsheet that has hard campaign caps and a running total for each player. So far it's working pretty well though it could use some tweaking. I may post the sheet in the near future, but I was hoping I could get a hold of the Character Rating System from Adventurer's Club #3. A couple guys online have pointed out that they have it, but nobody will share the article. My spreadsheet is based on a blurry memory of that AC #3 from 30+ years ago.

In a campaign where you may not have reliable access to rare ingredients or consistently be able get long rest periods it's balanced pretty well. Basically after the charges are gone you have to buy new bottles, rare ingredients and then spend 6 hours brewing the potions. If you fail your alchemy roll you do not get your charges back. If the GM hand-waves that then it's broken. They end up netting a -6 or more limitation on all of the powers so they're quite cost effective.

If you look at the Alchemist write-ups in the Grimoire they are massively limited by focus and brewing restrictions. They are powerful and CHEAP. A character can easily afford this many powers and many more w/out needing to use a multipower. Regardless, I would never allow multiple offensive spells to be used in a single phase regardless of limitations chosen. It's just too much firepower and as soon as it was allowed - all casters would switch to that model.

That's a fair point, but do you want to face an alchemist than can lob half a dozen exploding beads in a single titanic detonation? Sorry guys, the alchemist used expendable OAFs that require brew time to replace so he doesn't have Inc, Gest, Conc. Please make a Dive for Cover roll or eat 8d6 + 8d6 + 8d6 + 2.5d6K + 2.5d6k... Allowing multiples of the normal damage amount to occur all at once is going to be one hell of an alpha strike and one that I don't want players to endure nor build for themselves.

I've allowed my players to use multiple attack in Fantasy Hero with some limitations (large weapons sweep adjacent targets, 1-hand and dual wielders get 2 attacks on 1 target), but I don't allow multiple-attack with powers, nor would I allow a multiple power attack. Nobody wants to eat a Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Cloudkill, Cone of Cold mega-combo just because the attacking wizard is willing to pay END for all 4 moves up front. This concept just annihilates any semblance of balance.

As I convert my 2nd D&D table to HERO (Fantasy Hero) there are a couple of things that really stand out. I see why they lowered the stun multiplier on killing attacks - Had a lightning bolt (RKA 2d6+1 AoE Line) nearly flatline two party members with a max stun multiplier. 1d3 feels too low (averages 2), but even with 1d6-1 averaging 2.5 the potential to pull a 5x at a 16.67% chance is much too good compared to Hit Locations where your chance to get a 5x is under 5%. I'm seriously considering having custom dice made that run 1,2,2,3,3,4 to make this a little more predictable. Why weren't the stun multiples on the Hit Location chart changed at all when the stun multiplier was changed from 1d6-1 to 1d3? Barrier is too good - I've had to nerf it to have the earth bender be limited to a number of barrier instances limited by INT/5. Being able to abort to throw up a wall against incoming attacks is several times better than block, dodge or dive for cover. I miss Transfer.

Right. I understand the idea of penalties to rolls that Change Environment generates. What is less clearly defined is what type of additional effects you can inflict. Such as DEX roll or fall down or STR roll or get pushed back. There doesn't seem to be a defined list. Would obfuscating fog be just a -4 PER roll or would it be -4 PER roll or you're unable to see until your next phase?