m.mavnn

As someone currently recovering from a bout of stress exacerbated post viral fatigue... look after yourself, and don't let your frustration push you into making the situation worse. I'm sure this isn't news, but I know I need people to remind me that it's okay to do that (without telling me that the situation is okay, because sometimes it's actually not). I, of course, always follow my own advice on this 🙈

Off topic, but where abouts in Italy? I'm in Viterbo. With that kind of set up I'd try and keep costs down while making mind blades feel a bit other worldly. How about just buying them as a small HKA with no limitations or bonuses at all? It's cheap to buy because there's no STR min to worry about (which it should be, because everyone else is just spending a bit of cash on their weapons, not points). And it feels 'different' because rather than having to have the object to use, you pay END to keep the weapon active. Then if individual characters want to add armour piercing, reach, multipowers, etc, they can go to town on it but the basic power is really simple and clear.

Do you have ideas around posting frequency/timing? I'd be interested but between being on Central European Time and having family commitments I wouldn't want to be the one making the game drag.

That... actually sounds not far off what I'm suggesting for characters of the same size (modulo some minor version maths tweaks). Which is encouraging 😀. I am planning to keep the element of large characters being easy to hit for small characters though. I did forget one other aspect of the house rule though, which is that large characters ignore the area effect advantage if it doesn't exceed the area covered by their own "hands". (This applies regardless of actual body configuration / hand size, use the default value from the size templates). Let's say that Eva-1, Solid Snake and a troll end up in a fight. Eva-1 is approximately 80m tall making it gargantuan. This gives a -10 penalty to OCV/DCV, a +10 RSL, and it treats area attacks hitting 4m of less as normal attacks (can be blocked or dodged, etc) unless the special effect makes that silly. At 1m range Snake can stab the Eva with an effective +10 to hit, and would be hard for Eva to hit except Eva's feet stomping on him count as a 4m AoE attack. The troll? Same but with +8. At 32m, Snake now has a -4 range penalty to hit Eva while the Eva unit is still slapping down on him with 4m radius hand to hand attacks. The troll is the throwing rocks with a -2 range mod. Against a human opponent they would be 1m area effect attacks but the Eva swats them aside with its 4m wide hands (a block). At 250m Snake's -10 range mod completely counters the +10 size bonus he's receiving for shooting at Eva. Unfortunately for him, the Eva still has no range penalty at all, and its weapons probably do around 5DC more damage. It does still have the -10 size mod to hit. At 1km Eva has a -14 penalty to hit Snake (-10 from size, -4 from range), but Snake only has a -4 penalty to reply due to the Eva's size (note that from 250m onwards this is exactly the same total modifiers as raw - within that distance the Eva is disadvantaged compared to raw). If two Eva's get into a fight, they can both use unmodified OCV/DCV and the standard range modifiers without changing any of the maths at all if each hex is assumed to be 32m across. Which conveniently is almost exactly the scale Battletech maps are drawn at, just retaining the ability to zoom in... It does leave one question though: is it disadvantageous enough compared to raw to change the values of Growth and the large size limitations?

I'm actually deliberately avoiding that kind of sharp divide. I used Rifts as an example because more gamers know it but the main inspiration is more UF, a universe where many fictional universes meet with histories tweaked enough to make them coherent. The kind of universe where the Norse God of Mecha (son of Skuld) teams up with the Avatar (Korra edition) to take down a sith trained Babylon 5 psi-cop who's recreating the 3m tall dark troopers from the first Jedi Knight game needs a sliding scale of power rather than 'mega/not mega'. (So does Rifts for that matter - the lore brilliant Pantheons of the Megaverse resorts to giving characters tens of thousands of MDC points to try and scale relative powers...) Interesting! I started with 4th and so missed Robot Warriors. How did it deal with multiple sized combatents in the same fight?

I'm idly considering a campaign that might include a lot of large characters and vehicles (think Macross/Rifts/Undocumented Features). If it happens it will be a reasonably high powered and gonzo campaign, so strict balance isn't the goal here but I was noticing that the normal size rules don't quite cut it in this type of game. Because they operate by giving large characters a DCV penalty (in effect) it becomes very hard to represent the kind of agile, highly skilled hand to hand combat between mecha/large creatures that you often see in the source material - both parties will tend to have a much higher effective OCV than DCV, skewing the effectiveness of combat towards blocks and high defenses for large characters and making them feel "big and lumbering" even when fighting each other. As an alternative, I'm considering making size give the normal penalty to: OCV, DCV, Stealth and Perception rolls but a matching bonus in Range PSLs. This would mean two large opponents would fight against each other exactly the same way and with the same modifiers as two human sized opponents, just that they can fight effectively at longer range. When fighting against much smaller opponents they will find them hard to spot and hit at close range as they "get within reach" but at longer ranges size will become less and less of a factor. Although I'm not planning to use a strict "rule of X" I'd then let larger characters up their suggested attack and defence levels by 1 DC/3 defense per size category to compensate for their lower effective combat skills. Has anyone tried anything like this? Can you see any immediate issues I've missed?

Diving back into the "old times" of the board, but this collection of maneuver descriptions inspired by the Wheel of Time show how much flavour you can pack into a "standard" martial art and some skill levels: Going back to the original question, even a very small (10-15 point) multipower can make a huge difference to the "feel" of a character in play. Switch between "Eagle Observes the Flow: +1 OCV/DCV, cost END" and "Planted Oak Stance: +5 Resistant PD/ED, costs END, must be standing on a solid surface which takes the damage instead" and both your descriptions and tactical options will shift dramatically.

Oh, absolutely. The idea would be a story translation, not a rules one. One of the big frustrations for the players with pathfinder is the lack of flexibility, having to take options inappropriate for their character just to get to the ones that make sense, or metamagic being so prescriptive in what it allows. Many of the spells actually overlap from a story/special effect perspective. For example the majority of the attack spells can just be collapsed into an RKA with variable sfx and area, there's no need to buy dimension door and teleport as separate powers, and why model the limitations from mage hand when you have telekinesis? But a few spells, like this one, are flavourful enough that they've become part of the story of the character.

Penetrating dark vision with range penalty skill levels, all limited to only reading books. I love it

In the campaign I'm playing with converting, I (the GM) have used the spell several times to give the players specific pieces of information rather than (or more accurately, as an excuse for) the skill bonus. After all - it is actually showing snippets from books you probably haven't read. While the skill roll versions being proposed are simple and follow the *rule* effect of the spell closely, I'm beginning to wonder if some kind of 'no (or limited? You get to pick a topic) conscious control' clairvoyance might be more accurate to the special effect, and more fun to cast. That said, things like range become interesting - it feels like the 'range' should more be about how many books on the topic exist (easier for more books) than how far away they are.

I'm trying to think of the best way to model the spell Page Bound Epiphany from Pathfinder for a Hero mage. The special effect (which I love) is as follows: In Pathfinder, the spell gives +1 to knowledge skills per round you continue reading, up to a maximum of +10. But I'm not sure that fully reflects the description of the spell (which may reveal knowledge you didn't previously have at all), and also plays badly from a mechanics point of view with a lot of Hero magic systems as skill levels are wildly imbalanced in power frameworks. Any neat ideas, hive mind?

This sounds like some kind of regen (even from things that would normally kill you), or just extra body to avoid death - with the restriction that you get inconvenienced by injuries that 'go that far'. Which sounds like a limited power to me. You definitely should not need to spend points to represent the issues caused by the injuries; pretty much by definition the ability above should cost less than the ability to just heal without complications. Maybe a side effect that causes physical limitations chosen by the GM each time the "I'm not dead yet" effect triggers?

S. John Ross sells a hex (pack also includes isometric and other variants) font with instructions on how to print to the scale and paper size you want, if the flexibility is worth five bucks to you, but a dedicated program feels overkill: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/220331 It's also very simple to overlay the font over an image using pretty much any image manipulation software you can think of, because they nearly all know about fonts.

Let's see if we can do this image some justice. ---- Carque the Dragon Killer VAL CHA Cost Roll Notes 13 STR 3 12- HTH Damage 2 1/2d6 END [3] 18 DEX 16 13- 16 CON 6 12- 10 INT 0 11- PER Roll 11- 18 EGO 8 13- 13 PRE 3 12- PRE Attack: 2 1/2d6 7 OCV 20 8 DCV 25 3 OMCV 0 5 DMCV 6 4 SPD 20 Phases: 3, 6, 9, 12 11 PD 6 11/21 PD (3/13 rPD) 9 ED 4 9/29 ED (3/23 rED) 8 REC 4 35 END 3 10 BODY 0 30 STUN 5 Movement Cost Meters Notes RUNNING -4 8m/16m END [1] SWIMMING 0 4m/8m END [1] LEAPING 0 4m 4m forward, 2m upward Characteristics Total: 125 Cost Powers Dragoon Magic - END= 6 1) Leaping 20m (10 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2), Incantations (-1/4), Leaves A Trail (-0) - END=2 12 2) Resistant Protection (20 ED) (30 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2), Only versus dragon breath (-1/2), Incantations (-1/4), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4) - END=6 Powers Total: 18 Cost Martial Arts Halfling Axe Fighting [Notes: While most races think of the axe as an offensive weapon, halflings more tend to view axe fighting as "the art of the lumber jack while the tree tries to stomp on you." As such, they lean towards a very mobile and somewhat defensive style.] 5 1) Defensive Strike: 1/2 Phase, +1 OCV, +3 DCV, Weapon Strike 5 2) Flying Dodge: 1/2 Phase, -- OCV, +4 DCV, Dodge All Attacks, Abort; FMove 3 3) Legsweep: 1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, -1 DCV, Weapon +1 DC Strike, Target Falls 5 4) Passing Strike: 1/2 Phase, +1 OCV, +0 DCV, Weapon +v/10; FMove Martial Arts Total: 18 Cost Skills Halfling Culture 2 1) PS: Cook 11- 2 2) PS: Farmer 11- 7 3) Stealth 15- Dragon Slayer 4 1) KS: Dragon Weaknesses 13- 8 2) +2 with All Attacks (20 Active Points); Only when fighting dragons (-1), Requires A Roll (KS: Dragon Weaknesses roll; (when reallocating levels); -1/2) Experienced Warrior 20 1) +2 with All Attacks 3 2) Tactics 11- 4 3) WF: Common Melee Weapons, Common Missile Weapons 2 4) Navigation (Land) 11- Skills Total: 52 Cost Perks 4 Positive Reputation: The dragon slayer (Halfings) 11-, +2/+2d6 Perks Total: 4 Cost Talents 20 Weapon Master: +1d6 (Axes) 6 Combat Luck (3 PD/3 ED) Talents Total: 26 Value Complications 10 Physical Complication: Small (+6m kb) (Infrequently; Slightly Impairing) 15 Hunted: Evil Dragons Infrequently (Mo Pow; Harshly Punish) 10 Social Complication: "The Dragon Killer!" - famous halfling hero Frequently, Minor 15 Psychological Complication: Must live up to the example of the dragon slayers of history (Common; Strong) Complications Points: 50 Base Points: 275 Experience: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 Total Character Cost: 243 Annnnd a new image to replace him:

Really sorry to hear that @Simon. Hope you recover rapidly and safely.

I wasn't actually - although that might make sense to your campaign, and is a great idea! It was a more general comment: some things are really important, but only in certain campaigns. One way of telling players that when they are creating their characters is to make those things "first class citizens" during character creation. What do I mean by that? That they are a named thing, with a named cost that is presented to you as an option when you're building the character. If you run the style of campaign you're planning with the default rules, people might apply lightning reflexes, limited INT, enhanced perception, etc to get exactly the character they want but it will be expensive points wise compared to just buying lots of INT and DEX (as @Hugh Neilson pointed out) and (maybe more importantly?) first time HERO players will never think of doing it. Especially if they are coming from a more "pick your options from this list" style rules system. For an other variation of making things "first class": Fantasy Hero provides a large number of talents that you can just pick off a list. Nearly all of them are pretty simple power builds to do common fantasy related things, but by providing them in a list you immediately raise the chances of people using them. On a more directly practical note, I also personally think that your intuition is correct that INT is under priced for the style of game you're planning, because it has been priced for its utility in a fairly generic "action-y" type campaign. HERO's heritage is primarily supers, special agents, robots, high fantasy... so the pricing of abilities will reflect that. The rules explicitly call out the fact that you may need to adjust the skill lists for different campaigns (and I believe adding subcategories or sub-dividing skills is talked about in a side bar, but that's from memory). I think you may be correct that it would be worth doing that for stats as well.

I'm certain this must have been discussed before, but I'm not finding it at the moment. What export templates do people recommend for pasting into this forum?

There's also a matter of signaling, of communication. House rules can be a way of telling the players what matters in this campaign, how its focus is different from the 'default'. If you turn, say, High Society into a skill with subcategories (like survival) per noble house, you're giving a clue. If you turn it into a full blown social combat system, you're setting the campaign focus before the first character is started. Could you build characters with limited skill levels and PRE? Yes, but it would be a lot more hassle and a lot harder to communicate that this is an area that is a) important to the campaign and b) it's expected that characters will have varying levels of ability across these things.

A place to come if you want a random challenge to get your creative juices going. The rules: The thread should always have at least one "unstated" character image Add to the thread by commenting on the existing characters, or by providing stats (+ optionally name and background) for the last image. If you provide stats, you are also responsible for providing the next image Create an image by going to Hero Forge Go to the species tab and hit the random dice button Go to the clothing tab and hit the random dice button Go to the colour tab and pick body and theme colours (Completely optional) Add some equipment and a pose if you're feeling inspired Take a screen shot and post it here! No guidelines on character generation: Hero Forge covers fantasy, sci fi and modern (although with a fantasy slant) and different images might make wildly different points totals appropriate Don't be shy to reply to your own image if you're inspired Feel free to create alternative stats for previous images! It's not a race. If you're providing duplicate stats for the same image, it's up to you if you want to add a "next" image as well, but let's try and keep at least one inspiration image always available Let's have two options to start us off: anyone up for the challenge?

This seems pretty much the central point of the whole discussion. RPGs have a limited 'definition' of how granular they can be defining stats before they become unplayable, which inevitably means grouping things together that are related but, well, not the same. But what's important detail in one genre is window dressing in another; I once saw a Star Trek game that had no physical stats, for example, because it didn't need that detail. It just had a very broad 'physically superior' advantage if you wanted to be Data or Worf. In your case, both perception and INT skills are absolutely crucial to the genre of the campaign, so I would say your intuition to split them up is a good call *for this game*. HERO is as much an RPG creation toolkit at the end of the day (see heroic vs superheroic options), so if you're going off the beaten genre path you may as well lean into that.

Second RPG I ever played was a game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay set in the 40k universe (the fantasy roleplay and 40k Rogue Trader stats were compatible enough you could basically just do that). I didn't have a PC, and the group wanted to get to know me a bit before offering me a place. That was fair enough; I was 14 and the rest of the group were in their 30s-40s and it wasn't clear that we were going to be a good match. And it would have been awkward to bring in a new character anyway, as the party were in the process of trying to reclaim their ship from space pirates and they'd left off half way through the pitched boarding battle (having used their extensive knowledge of their own ship to get back on board). So the GM gave me an NPC crew member to play - and not just any old mook, but the heavy weapons specialist. So we clear out a few rooms, plant sapping charges on the bridge door, blow it off its hinges, and we all burst in! The GM loving describes the senior pirates, including the pirate captain in his shiney chaos marine power armour. Who promptly shoots and nearly kills my character, who's rolled the highest initiative in the party. "That sounds bad," says I, "and very tough. I'm going to switch to full auto on the plasma cannon and empty the clip." The DM considers. Rolls some dice. Looks up some armour ratings. "Well, there's good news and bad news. Good news is, there's nothing left of the pirate captain except a smoking pair of boots magnetically held to the floor. The bad news is, you and the rest of the party are being sucked out of the gaping hole in the front of the bridge out you just opened into deep space. Worst news is, your character just got several holes blown in his space suit and it's no longer air tight." Long story short: they should have given me a power sword...

The animation was based on a discussion that basically said there's no point putting Vadar up against a normal space marine as they can't do much against the force powers, what would happen if he fought one of the space marine librarians (psychic/wizard, there isn't much difference in 40k). Which made a cool animation, but also rendered the question a bit pointless - psychics in 40k range from 'it would hardly make a difference versus Vadar' to ridiculously over powered army killers who would squish him like a bug. So you basically get to just choose which side wins at that point.

Going with @Ninja-Bear 's idea of giving both the characters strength and their weapon a dice size (would mean ignoring STR min, and reducing weapon damage I guess?) you'd end up with something like... STR 10 (1/2D6) + Dagger (1/2d6) against defense 0 Expected outcome: 4.0 Standard deviation: 1.1547005383792515 STR 10 (1/2D6) + Dagger (1/2d6) against defense 4 Expected outcome: 0.4444444444444444 Standard deviation: 0.6849348892187751 STR 10 (1/2D6) + Dagger (1/2d6) against defense 8 Expected outcome: 0.0 Standard deviation: 0.0 STR 10 + Dagger normal 1d6+1 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 4.5 Standard deviation: 1.707825127659933 STR 10 + Dagger normal 1d6+1 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 1.0 Standard deviation: 1.1547005383792515 STR 10 + Dagger normal 1d6+1 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 0.0 Standard deviation: 0.0 STR 20 (1d8) + Greatsword (1d8) against defense 0 Expected outcome: 9.0 Standard deviation: 3.24037034920393 STR 20 (1d8) + Greatsword (1d8) against defense 4 Expected outcome: 5.0625 Standard deviation: 3.1268744378372473 STR 20 (1d8) + Greatsword (1d8) against defense 8 Expected outcome: 1.875 Standard deviation: 2.218529918662356 STR 20 + Greatsword normal 2 1/2d6 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 9.0 Standard deviation: 2.5495097567963922 STR 20 + Greatsword normal 2 1/2d6 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 5.0092592592592595 Standard deviation: 2.5294391501410183 STR 20 + Greatsword normal 2 1/2d6 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 1.6018518518518519 Standard deviation: 1.8203571831781864

I started getting curious on this one, so I put some code to work crunching some numbers. I decided to start with three different levels of damage dealing, and then compared each one against an opponent with 0, 4 and 8 points of resistant defences (I'm assuming killing attacks here). The scenarios are (hopefully this is kind of readable even if you don't know the programming language). Feel free to suggest variants you'd be interested/other ways of comparing the effects, they're pretty quick to code up. scenarios :: [(Text, Prob Integer)] scenarios = [ ("4 DCs d8", d8), ("4 DCs d6 + 1", roll 1 d6 1), ("5 DCs d10", d10), ( "5 DCs d6 + d3", do half <- diceRoll 3 full <- d6 pure $ full + half ), ("10 DCs 2d10", roll 2 d10 0), ("10 DCs 3d6+1", roll 3 d6 1) ] The results are a little verbose at the moment, as I knocked this out over my lunch break: 4 DCs d8 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 4.5 Standard deviation: 2.29128784747792 4 DCs d8 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 1.25 Standard deviation: 1.479019945774904 4 DCs d8 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 0.0 Standard deviation: 0.0 4 DCs d6 + 1 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 4.5 Standard deviation: 1.707825127659933 4 DCs d6 + 1 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 1.0 Standard deviation: 1.1547005383792515 4 DCs d6 + 1 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 0.0 Standard deviation: 0.0 5 DCs d10 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 5.5 Standard deviation: 2.8722813232690143 5 DCs d10 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 2.1 Standard deviation: 2.1656407827707715 5 DCs d10 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 0.3 Standard deviation: 0.6403124237432849 5 DCs d6 + d3 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 5.5 Standard deviation: 1.8929694486000912 5 DCs d6 + d3 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 1.7222222222222223 Standard deviation: 1.5918387535438225 5 DCs d6 + d3 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 5.555555555555555e-2 Standard deviation: 0.22906142364542556 10 DCs 2d10 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 11.0 Standard deviation: 4.06201920231798 10 DCs 2d10 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 7.04 Standard deviation: 3.9847710097319267 10 DCs 2d10 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 3.56 Standard deviation: 3.2964223030431037 10 DCs 3d6+1 against defense 0 Expected outcome: 11.5 Standard deviation: 2.958039891549808 10 DCs 3d6+1 against defense 4 Expected outcome: 7.5 Standard deviation: 2.958039891549808 10 DCs 3d6+1 against defense 8 Expected outcome: 3.662037037037037 Standard deviation: 2.689424335780339

Ha! You might be waiting a few months/a year plus for actual play results - the players are tired of the Pathfinder rules, but want to finish off the current story without changing rule set (which is fairly involved, we're playing through the Kingmaker campaign if you've seen it/the computer game based on it). The fact that they decided to make actual characters rather than just buckets of numbers means there's also a lot of individual clean up to do for a satisfying finale beyond "beating the big bad". I'm just impatient because DMing high level Pathfinder is a slog.