Palmate

Re: Old West Setting? I personally feel most comfortable running Heroic games with around 150pt, 75/75 or any breakdown there-in. For western I would test build a few characters, and you will need to decide about the Firearms... it will be a big decision for the campaign. I personally would build the 5-10 most common firearms for the setting, include bows and arrows, etc. then work with the players, anything out side of those items either need to be approved by you, or if non-standard by the setting standards, then perhaps purchased with character points as a "special" model or something along those lines. Otherwise I would not have the players required to purchase the guns and such, gets to be too expensive and stops making sense at some point. so to recap, I think 150 CP characters are about right, heroic, but they don't fly as suggested in Heroic games PCs don't tend to have to by their equipment except in special cases. I would stick with that as well. P

Re: What do you think of Endurance Reserve in 6E? I think, like many items in the toolkit, that it isn't for everyone. It certianly has its uses, maybe not a silver bullet - but few things are in the HERO system - more like another type of ammo. P

Re: Old West Setting? Deadlands was a pretty good system with a heavy western bent, and if you don't like that, Hero would be great - you can port a lot over both from other systems and movies fairly easily, as others have pointed out. Western Hero is a good source book I still reference whenever I have a western one shot or scene with western influence. I recommend picking it up if you can find it cheap. I think I paid like 7 bucks at a Half Price Books a few years ago. I own PAH but honestly have not cracked the cover as I moved just after getting it... Personally I would go Hero – but I convert many of my games, and systems over to Hero. I would look at how Firearms are built, look at using MP for some situations; it will be a heavy skill based game - imo - with the main powers being firearms, and maybe a good dose of Luck Let us know how it goes. P

Re: Bartering & Trade Cancer - nice idea... funny, I like it. Escafarc - I'm not too familiar with resource points, I will have to read up on them - do you use the rules as written, or modify them? P

Re: Bartering & Trade Thanks, that's really what I'm going for. A setting where having coin isn't common at all - in fact, it is less likely to get you what you want/need as you can't eat coins... well you can, but that is another thread. P

I’m interested to hear how others on this forum handle trading, and more specifically barter in their games. Is this something that you play through in your FH games? Do you fall back on the coin standard where everyone has enough gold, silver or copper to purchase item. I hope to be able to run a game where at time coin may work, but in general the farmer or peasant isn’t going to have the coin to get what they need. Maybe in cities it will be more accepted to use coin, but I like the idea of trading four eggs for a jug of milk; the issue is I don’t necessarily want the game to come to a screeching halt every time the party decides to trade something. I’m tempted to just fall back on the trading skill, but would like to hear alternatives. So how do y’all handle it in your games – or how have you seen it done; what did you like, what didn’t you like? P

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? I completely see the point being made regarding the power struggle between spell casters and non-spell casters; A consideration I have not heard mentioned is that while a caster can do this and that with a spell vs. a crossbow, those are point the caster is spending not on skills or skill levels, I have consistently seen in the heroic games a wizard that can do a ton of stuff (though most of the time limitations are placed regarding how new spells are learned, what the roll is to cast, cost to maintain, etc) where as the non caster tends to focus as well a few skills here and there, but combat levels with sword or crossbow makes the non-caster just as devastating... Its a tool kit, it is going to be up to the GM to place reasonable limits to maintain a balance. Magic should not be cheap - unless everyone has it. Palmate

Re: Combat Familiarity Just catching up on this thread... I like the idea a lot, it's got merit. I was considering a slightly different take on it and going with something like with Gambling and Survival and have the "familiarities" be sub-skills . so it might look like this: Teamwork: Marines XXX Division XXX Squad Sgt. X It may just be semantics but what are thoughts on this?