ShadowRaptor

Yeah by reading his regular updates as to how the Fantasy HERO book is coming it sounds as if it will really help me out a lot, and I am actually going to wait until that book comes out before I try anything with HERO.

How did all of your first attempts at running a HERO game go for you? And be honest, I can be honest and say mine royally did not go as I had hoped and blew up in my face. ON a side note, I did go see Matrix Reloaded today and that movie rocked. sorry, couldn't resist.

Okay, so it wasn't me. I didn't think it was.

I don't even know what YMMV means. Can you do me a favor and show me my quote where I called my players 'dumb beasts'? If I did that then I'm stupider than I thought. I think as a beginner I could have misjudged the balance, I can accept that possibility and even say that all beginners to HERO probably make that kind of mistake. It's a learning experience. I do apologize for my rude comments in the above post. I was upset.

Wow, talk about getting hammered in the head on here. I already admitted that this could have been my error, did anybody see that on page 3? I don't think so. I think my last post got overlooked some. As for full stats, ocv, dcv, things like that, I won't post them because its not important. I originally posted what I did because of the title of this thread "Fantasy RPG Rant" and that's all I was doing, so all those stats are needless. Yes they were my judgements and conclusions, yes I created the characters to their specifications because I was the only one who knew how to create them. Does that make sense tesuji? Perhaps not. Was it my senario? Yes cuz they didn't know the system. Did I make a mistake or many? Probably to yes. Did i use Automaton rules? No. I made them as regular people and labeled them robots. I should have made that point earlier but I did not. I told them that they were going to fight some robots as a exercise, one robot for each of them. 4 on 4. Did I fully understand the rules? I can admit that I did not, as I already did on page 3 tesuji. Did you read that? Apparently not. Was the end result my fault? As the GM I can clearly say that it was partly my fault and partly their fault, so in this case it was a total team failure if that is how you want to look at it. Did I explain that tactics would be useful? Yes I did. Did I tell them that they have options? Yes I did. Did I type up a combat maneuver sheet for them listing all the options available to them from the basic list? Yes I did. Did I type up any martial maneuvers for those that had martial maneuvers? Yes I did. Did I explain how they worked as far as I understood it to those that had them so they knew what they had? Yes I did. Did I explain all their powers and skills so they knew what they could do? Yes I did. I did not go into it blind, I did make sure the players knew what they had, I asked them what they had to make sure. So, after all that, I did assume that they would not use Diablo-DnD-HackNSlash tactics to wade through. I told them that this is more lethal than what they are used to. I explained how damage worked so they knew what and how it worked. Believe me if you want, I am not lying about any if this. I can understand those that may have difficulties with this tesuji, I can respect those that offer me options, explain how I might have been wrong, things I can work on so I get better. Yes, tesuji, you do annoy people, and I know you don't care because you seem to be the type of person that doesn't care about any opinions but your own and it seems that you don't really respect others beyond a passing hand, but I have no respect for you. And I am sure you could care less, but thats okay because you have no respect for others.

It's all good, I can accept that it might have been my fault in the design of the scenario and the situation, and them being so used to a set mentality, so the entire thing crashed and burned. It's just a learning experience after all. I now know what kinds of games that group of players likes, and I know mine, and at least I learned that from the whole thing. As for character creation goes, I made them only because I knew the system for creating characters goes. None of them really knew it, but at least they tried it.

That stuff is cool dude. Way to go.

Yeah, but I only had the Hero game for a month before trying it and I didn't know everything about it. It's not my fault, its never my fault. No way, It's their fault, not mine. Rant aside, I do understand what your getting at and that could be the way it was, but even with their vast versatility with options common sense should dictate that with their powers and superiority, and believe me they had superiority over the robots, they just ran at them and hacked away like it was Diablo/D&D. I told them for the two weeks before this that this is not D&D, use tactics, use common sense. Pretend this is not D&D. They didn't listen to me. Heck, I didn't even know what all I could do with them. And these guys have roleplayed for much longer than myself (I've only been gaming since d20 system came out). They simply used D&D actions and Diablo mentality, and they got crushed, and they got mad because they lost when they felt that they should have won, and they should have won but they didn't, and they gave up before they could even learn the system better. When I say won and lost, I mean the battle between the robots. These players are so used to winning in D&D because its become so normal for the players to win against almost everything they come across that they didn't think they could lose using their typical tactics in combat, and they did. But, I will also look at myself and consider how I could do things differently.

oooooooo.....I wanna rant about D&D/fantasy rpg also. *waves hand in air to get attention* To me D&D is one of those love it/hate it games. I like it for the options (in 3e), and yet at the same time I hate it for that exact same reason. There is soooooo much for it now that a person could drown in the material, and sifting through it all can cause more of a migraine than getting hit in the head with a hammer. I have noticed a trend with steady D&D players, in my own experience, and that is many players that have only played D&D, or just play it more than other games, really have a set mentality about how they look at the games as far as combat goes, and that's why I say D&D breeds Hack-N-Slash mentality and tactics in both character creation and metagame thinking. I have tried taking a group of D&D regulars into other games, we did a one shot Exalted with four Exalted and they got their butts handed to them by a group of four Dragon-Blooded because they were so used to fighting everything in both a system manner and metagame thinking that they got hosed. Once that happened, they put the game away and said that it was too hard and that D&D is better. Last month I also tried doing a Champions one shot. I made the characters because I am the only one that knew the system, but I did make sure I got the jist of what they wanted to know. Basically the group was a spiderman clone, cyclops clone, wolverine clone and iron man clone, and all were made with 300 points. Despite the variety involved in their powers, they got wasted by 4 175 point robots because they used their typical ways of fighting bred from playing D&D for ten years, and after the game they said they would only play D&D from now on because this game was also too hard for them, and they weren't used to it. I don't know if this sounds familiar to any of you, but if it does relate to something you have epxerienced then you know what I am getting at. It is for these reasons that I no longer play D&D.

With the different classes getting same spells at different levels, you could always just apply the total points to whichever level it appears at on the class charts at the lowest level. Say Class A gets spell at level 4, and Class B gets spell at level 3, then treat the spell itself at level 3 regardless of which other classes have it at whatever level they got it originally. When translating D&D over I am not expecting everything to remain the same, but my god those spells you have converted over have the right feel, and now I am really seeing the versatility of HERO. How long you been playin this game Shrike? I wish I lived where you live so I could be in a game that you run, if you run one.

staying tuned!

cool, I am glad to be a part of this community. *sniff, sniff* you are all very helpful to newbies.

As a wanna be GM and somebody who is trying to get a group together, this thread is wonderful. One thing I am curious about for you guys is how you plan your encounters specifically. Do you go by points? CV's? anything in particular?

Why would anybody buy a Ranged Killing Attack and then put the limitation of No Range on it when you can by a HtH killing attack instead, which is what you are really buying, isn't it? Or am I missing something. I ask because I see many powers that have this set up, but I also notice that many of them are linked to a different power, like the Laser Sword in Star HERO that represents a lightsaber. I am just confused.

I don't think its broken but it does alleviate the characters from basically having the same stats all the time for the same effectiveness. Under the normal rules there really is no reason to have anything different than a 23 DEX, 23 CON, and 18 INT. If you can pay for the points that is.

There's more than one Pikachu???? Oh god, help us all now, the world is about to end. I really liked that combat example. Perhaps you could do one with END playing a factor. Reading examples of combat is much more helpful than just reading pages of rules, and you showing us the effects of the segments and how they work really is truly helpful. Who knows. Perhaps this can be a thread about how to run different kinds of combats with different kinds of examples to show all the various applications of the varous rules within the mighty tomb of FRED.

I was just thinking of a way to spice it up. If I am a player and I have a Dex 19 and the other player has a Dex 20 and we both have Spd 4, then he will always go before me unless he decides to wait his action. I would prefer some kind of randomization to spice it up a bit to make it seem like its more spontaneous. I did suggest my original at the beginning of combat and leave it at that, but that would also be somewhat unrealistic. Perhaps if the roll was after each Post 12 Segment or something like that. But not each segment itself. I don't want that much bookkeeping.

Killer Shrike, your a genius. You wanna do all the D&D class abilities like this also for us. Who knows, maybe you could submit it to Digital Hero for publication.

thanks for the little advice I got, I appreciate it. I was also hoping for some experiences some of you have with the game, things of conflicts you encountered and advice in general related to running the game (which I did get some).

I was just flipping through the book, reading the combat section and noticed that no matter what the characters will go in the same rough order all the time and I was trying to figure a way to change it. Then I was reading JAGS and an idea popped into my head, which is this: At the beginning of each combat, each person makes a DEX check and compares it to their Dexterity roll. If they fail their roll, they subtract 1 from their total DEX for each they missed by unless they roll a natural 18. If they succeed they add one to their respective DEX for each number they succeed by unless they roll a natural 3. If they critically fail, they roll 3d6 and subtract that from their DEX on top of the previous difference, and if they critically succeed they roll 3d6 and add it to their DEX on top of the previous difference. I don't know if this would work, but it could lead to some interesting combat orders. Or, the roll could be based on some other characteristic, like INT or EGO, but still modify DEX according to how well it was rolled. I don't know how well that would be though. Any thoughts??? Is this good? Bad? so so...?

I like how you implemented EGO into the equations. Did you just come up with these or have you tried using them in the past?

Okay, I want to run a encounter with 75 point characters (50 base + 25 disadvantage) to simulate the fact that these characters are later teens and never have really left the village they all grew up in, and I want to run some harrowing encounter that let's them know that the world at large is getting larger and their safe haven is no longer safe. My idea is to basically have them go off with the ranger in the village to go search for a late shipment of materials from the nearest town which is 60 miles away. Along the way they encounter something not natural. My dilemma is, how do I balance an encounter so the creature doesn't kill them immediately? For all of you more experienced with this, how do you plan encounters and what do you look for so this kind of experience (TPK) doesn't happen? Any advice would be welcome very much.

Why would the cost of HtH attacks need to go up if the STR is increased to 2 pts instead of 1?

I was wondering, what would the ramifications be if you changed the cost of STR from 1 point to 1.5 or 2 points per STR point? What would happen to game balance as it is designed now?

I like the idea of finding materials that have some of the CP's available for use in making the item. I mean, it would suck to make a scroll or magic item with full CP cost and then lose it while the fighters can get some of their equipment for free without paying CP for it.