Coyotecloudchas

Re: Young Gods stride Creation Campiagns? Obviously at those point levels, it will be very hard to balance the campaign and make it interesting. You will have to constantly create rules that will keep the players from accidentally blowing up the planet or annihilating a species (...I killed ALL or going back in time and changing your world to their benefit. In addition, just imagine how easily they could wipe out a fellow godling that didn't have the appropriate defense against a tactic? Mysteries wouldn't be possible unless you outlaw powers like Telepathy and Clairsentience. Things like the weather ("was that lightning that just hit me?"), travel distance ("I can Superleap between planets."), and other details of the environment just won't matter. I could go on, but you see the point. Just doesn't sound like the campaign would be much fun to me unless what the characters could do was very limited. "...in a brief but overwhelmingly intense moment of insane rage, he lashed out with his mind and destroyed the attackers with a mere thought — not just the one Husnock ship that had attacked the colony and killed Rishon, but the entire Husnock species, all 50 billion of them, everywhere, all at once" - "The Survivors" is a third season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation first broadcast on October 9, 1989

Re: A Boon from the Gods... I would say the way you write it up would depend on the reason you need to write it up at all. Since its the gift of a higher power, presumedly there is no need to put a limit on its effectiveness. However, if you want it to be possible to be able to Dispel or Suppress or simply overpower the ability somehow, then I could see why you'd want to write it up. So for example if its a big AID to Body or lots of Armor, then if he took a big enough hit (e.g. dragon's breath) then it may not save him?

Re: HTH combat questions Actually been playing Hero for 20 years Otherwise however, you correctly understand the situation of my inadvertantly creating the imbalance. As I mentioned earlier, in this rare case the whole situation would make sense if the automaton foe simply holds their action to wait for the character to stop dodging. In that case, then its clearly a mismatch and the character would have no choice but to run away when he get the chance with his higher DEX.

Re: HTH combat questions As opposed to changing his SPD and winning the fight? Which is what he did.

Re: Another Damage Question Note: 1 1/2d6 and 2d6-1 are sometimes used interchangeably as the same damage class. When we roll "1 1/2d6", we pick up two six-sided dice (that look different) and before we roll we just say which one is the "half die" so we know how to add them.

Re: HTH combat questions Correct Ghost-Angel, block and dodge only give a stalemate at best when you're the same SPD as your opponent. Roll for Punch is a difficult maneuver to pull off though, and only mitigates the damage somewhat so may not save you. This is a rare situation we're talking about when having a higher DEX and SPD is a DISADVANTAGE. It doesn't happen often, but occurs with the following conditions: 1) Your opponent is likely to take you out in one or two hits 2) You cannot take a single action that will deter your opponent from taking a swing at you (i.e. hitting him first only puts you at a disadvantage). 3) You are the same SPD as your opponent 4) You have a higher DEX than your opponent 5) Your opponent mindlessly attacks and does not save his actions 6) Your DCV with Dodge is significantly higher than your opponents OCV If these conditions are all true, then you are at an advantage by slowing your SPD so your actions don't coincide with your opponent's phases. That way you can use a Dodge that will cover more than one of his attacks. By exploiting your only advantage, DCV, you use your only chance at victory.

Re: HTH combat questions Sorry, but its pretty simple. Assume a SPD 4 character is facing a SPD 4 Mashing Machine with one less DEX. The Automaton, being mindless, attacks whenever his phase and DEX comes up. Unfortunately for the character the Mashing Machine is a huge sledgehammer and he can't afford to be hit and mashed into putty. He dodges the hammer blow, but since they are the same SPD and he is forced to act first because of his higher DEX he stops dodging before the next blow and must wait to avoid the next attack. He is forced to either run out of range of the mashing machine on his higher DEX or Hold his Action to dodge again. And so on. However, then he realizes that if he slows to SPD 3 then when the hammer swings for him on Phase 3 and he cancels his Phase 4 action to Dodge, then he will still be dodging when it swings again on Phase 6 and he lives! On Phase 8 he can now smash the machine's gears with his wrench. When the Masher throws a pound on him on Phase 9, he cancels his Phase 12 action to Dodge. He is still dodging when phase 12 rolls around and lives again! By intelligently SLOWING down to SPD 3 he proves victorious! Now if the automaton had an ounce of sense, as the others were pointing out in the intelligent predator example above, it would wait for the SPD 3 character to stop dodging and then swing again. Then our PC would be doomed!

Re: HTH combat questions Thanks for all the comments all, especially Caris! I spoke with the players and they agreed on the SPD issue that simply giving foes enough combat awareness to save their actions until a character stops dodging makes sense even for beserk animals or zombies, and gives players with higher speed the advantage. In this particular example, the "animal" was a spirit wolf attacking the characters astral projection in a spirit journey. I substituted the characters PRE for STR, EGO for DEX, and SPD was based on INT. The mage was SOOO excited that he would finally be the fastest one in combat and the warriors would be the slow ones, and SOOO disappointed that the rules seemed to cancel out his new SPD/DEX boost when the spirit was simply mindlessly attacking him. On the OCV limit issue, I guess I will simply have to deal with it on a case-by-case basis. At the beginning of the campaign when everyone is OCV 5-10 and most foes DCV is in the 3-6 range, its not a problem. When they start building their combat levels and getting powerful magic items that boost their OCV, then HTH combat gets more complicated. I do allow characters to exceed OCV 13 if they do something spectacular with Acrobatics or Sleight of Hand, but usually that's about it. The DCV levels can get really high, but I don't allow levels for DCV only and they only get DCV vs. Range Attacks with Combat or Overall levels which are expensive in points. The high DCVs possible force the characters to be creative with their attacks ("I pin that slimy duelist to the wall with the bar table!"), and makes Warriors somewhat less effective than mages (who have ranged and EGO attacks). This is fair because mages have to pay a lot of points for their spells, while the warriors don't have to pay points for equipment. A popular tactic in this campaign is to have the warriors form a shield wall in front of their "heavy artillary" - the mage with the EGO attack. It all works out in the end!

Re: Building Intrugue Into a Game

Re: HTH combat questions -- If I didn't limit OCV then it throws the whole campaign out of balance. One character can get OCV 20, and one has OCV 4. One has no chance to hit the master villain, one can easily do Called Shots to the eye socket. I have never run a campaign where NONE of the characters were interested in making themselves better in combat, and just happily spent all their XP on non-combat skills. If the character were SPD 3 going up against the animal, he is in even more trouble. If he were attacking on SEG 4, have the animal Dodge and show him what it's all about. SPD 4 is better, no matter which way you slice it. -- Only if the animal uses tactics in combat does this make sense. In the case of the animal just mindlessly attacking on its DEX and SPD then a slower character actually has the advantage of being able to dodge during all of the animal's phases and still freely attack. I guess what you're saying is you should always give even mindless zombies combat awareness so they will save their actions against slower characters?

Re: Spell Active/ Real Cost in Average Games Agreed with above posters. Some of my characters ending up spending over half their points on spells, and others just dabbled in magic. I usually start my campaigns with everyone limited 25-30 Active point attacks, but when they achieve uber status they can be sitting as high as 60-70 Active points. As someone else said, another thing is Active/Real Points is not always a very good measure of effectiveness. Force Fields, Entangles, Drains vs SPD, and certain defenses like Lack of Weakness or Power Defense can be unbalancing even at low point levels.

Just wanted to ask you guys how you handle some HTH combat questions in your Fantasy Hero campaigns. 1) I have always gone with an OCV max of 13 (with the exception of Block maneuvers) and no limit on DCV. This tends to create the longer Robin Hood style duels between master fencers I was looking for in my campaign - DCV can be significantly higher than OCV so it can be very tough to hit someone who is dodging or blocking. However here is the problem: let's say the character has trained his Combat levels to OCV 13 and then wins a magic item that boosts his DEX or his OCV, or simply learns a new Martial maneuver which grants an OCV bonus. I usually tell him that his leftover combat levels are to be used for DCV only. Not too bad. However, then it breeds a new set of questions like - how about when I do a Move Through or Called chest shot, then can I use the extra levels to get back to OCV 13? 2) I was running an adventure the other night where the PC was SPD 4 and 15 DEX. His opponent was an animal that was SPD 4 and 14 DEX. After a turn or two he realized lowering himself to SPD 3 was better, and he wished he was a lower DEX! What would happen is that he would save his action and then Dodge the attack, but he would stop dodging on his next action at 15 DEX before the animal attacked again, and would have to dodge again to avoid being hit. He never had any open actions to counterattack with. On the other hand, if he lowered himself to SPD 3 he could cancel to Dodge on his phases 8 and 12 actions and have a free phase to attack the animal on Phase 4 every turn. Obviously this is counterintuitive and doesn't make any sense. Is there a rule that allows a character to voluntarily lower their DEX only for purposes of their order in combat? OR allow a SPD 4 character to act on phases 4, 7, 10, 12 without being forced to hold their action? Just curious if you guys ever run into these questions.

Re: What cities do you use in your game? My players prefer the D & D Greyhawk setting because it has a lot of politics and background material, but they also like it when I mix it up by throwing some World of Warcraft settings in there. The characters have been based in Greyhawk, Chendl, and some areas of the Vesve Forest and Nyrond.

Re: Immune to Magic OH, but if you're just looking to DIMINISH magic effects and not cancel them out, I have two suggestions: 1) High Power: the old Supress vs. ALL Magic, Dmg Shield, 0 END, Persistent, Always On, can work (maybe you add Area Effect). Just roll to see many active points get subtracted from any spell affecting the character. Technically it doesn't work vs. all magic effects you could imagine, but the GM can fudge it in those uncommon cases. Its a lot of points, but it IS a powerful effect. 2) Low Tech: 6d6 Luck, only to offset magical effects (-1)

Re: Immune to Magic Talent: Immunity to Magic Basically that's it. Buy it like an immunity to iocaine poison. The GM will tell you how much he thinks it will cost depending on the advantages and disadvantages he perceives it is. Its a plot device. For example, will not being to receive magical healing or use magic items severely handicap your character? If so it may not need to cost a lot of points, or you may also get a Disadvantage for the negative aspects. On the other hand, if all your GM's enemy NPCs are mages who are rendered impotent by your Talent then he/she may make it cost 100+ points, if he allows it at all. Oh, and if its an NPC, who cares how many points it costs. Its a plot device.