drunkonduty

Good luck! I've been thinking about Pathfinder/HERO conversions a lot lately, since I'm stuck in Pathfinder Hell at the moment. (I haven't complained about Pathfinder on these forums this week, so thanks for the excuse!)

As to your actual concerns.

1) I don't see this as a problem. I've found HERO much easier to teach than DnD or its equivalents. The only problem I've ever had where a player had trouble with grasping the nuances of the system was with one specific player who couldn't wrap their head around decreasing OCV to do a higher damage attack. The player wanted to use the low attack/high damage attack the whole time, despite the fact that it had a much lower chance of hitting. It was -2 OCV, a significant reduction against similar powered opponents. A fact I explained repeatedly but that they couldn't come to terms with. They fixated on "High Damage Good." They grew frustrated with the game and dropped out. But that is literally the only player  I've ever had who struggled with the system. It was the bell curve for probability that threw them.

2) Without knowing more about your own particular version of the combat system I can't comment.

3) I love minis. I have many, many minis. Mostly unpainted. And Reaper has just started another Kickstarter (Bones V) to sell me more at a bargain price. Yay! Sorry. What was the question again? Oh right, generic or specific. Look, character specific minis can be hard to come by. Unless you use HERO Forge or similar to custom make your own. That gets expensive fast. Near enough is good enough. If players get into it enough they can buy their own custom made ones or go to the effort of hunting down close matches.

4) Well, I really dislike Forgotten Realms. For the usual reasons: Too many super high level NPCs floating about. So detailed there's no room for your own stuff to fit in. World changing events based on meta game rules changes. It's all a bit twee. The maps are good though.

I don't love Golarion. It's too kitchen sink for my liking. I don't want Sci-fi AND Low Fantasy AND High Fantasy AND Epic Fantasy AND Russian Folklore AND Dinosaur Riders of the Lost World AND Gothic Horror... You see where I'm coming from. It's very difficult to mix some of these elements together. Mostly it's the sci-fi vs. Fantasy thing. I also see major problems mixing High Fantasy and Low Fantasy. But I'm in danger of digressing into a whole philosophy of world building thing. (Maybe I'll start another thread for that.)

Of the 2 choices - Golarion. HERO will at least help make equivalencies between the various stylistic threads of the world a little less jarring. And many of the individual bits are actually quite cool. They only get weird (for me!) when juxtaposed against all the other bits.

Best of luck, let us know how it's going. 🙂

I love that Masquerade wears an evening gown and heels to battle crime. Style is important!

4 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

No, they did not.

Hmm. So the plagiarism goes back to the comics then. Well then, that's a thing.

Don't you want a grandchild?

If I do I'll just scrape all your mishaps together and knit it a onesie.

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

For Aquaman? Just declare that his Atlantean name is "Namor." Done.

Finally saw Aquaman on the weekend. (Well, most of it. Switched off in the middle of the climactic fight. Not a good movie. I like Jason Momoa but he keeps showing up in total dogs. This. Conan. Blerrgh.)

Anyhoo... not that familiar with Aquaman but did they re-tool his background to deliberately be pretty much the same as Namor's? You know, so as to undercut any potential Namor movie.

34 minutes ago, assault said:

 

I remember running into one of these very early on in my Champions career. From memory, we got inside it.

One of the reasons why I don't have character sheets for my earliest Champions characters is that my earliest campaigns were ridiculously munchkinized. It was to the point that when I offered to GM, a player refused to show me his character sheet because it would expose the way he had designed his character. Apparently his awesome super design skills needed to remain secret so nobody else could replicate them. Funnily enough, that game never got off the ground.

Might have been ol' Bimon with that Ogre. I'm a Brisbanite originally, and Bimon still lives there.

My first ever game of Champions.

So the guy that introduced us to the system, let's call him Bimon,  spent a good couple of weeks haranguing us to try Champions. We finally gave in and gave it a go. I drew up a brick character, the Mad Chef of Budapest. (For some reason the game was set in Budapest.)

Bimon was a very adversarial GM.

The game opened with the characters doing whatever it was they did in their off-duty hours. My guy was making goulash, because chef. Then the screaming begins. We all rush to the trouble spot and see an Ogre crawling down the street. Not the Champions villain, nor the mythological creature, but a huge (about 100 tonnes) automated armoured vehicle from the (Steve Jackson?) mini game Ogre. The thing is firing off rounds from some of its many guns. On its side is a big ol' Hammer and Sickle, my  character's particular hot button. The heroes attack!

And we do nothing to it. Our biggest attacks can't even scratch it. This goes on for a turn or so, Bimon laughing smugly at us all the while. Eventually sick of this my character does the only thing I can think of; he gets in under the Ogre, flexes his muscles and tries to flip it over. He had just enough STR to lift the thing. Bimon is not happy. He says my character couldn't possibly get the leverage needed to flip the thing. I (angrily) agree that no, not in the real world,but this character isn't in the real world and what would be the point of having a character with the strength to lift a 100 tonnes if he could never lift a 100 tonnes? Bimon conceded my point. One thing about Bimon, you can count on him to play by the rules.

So the Ogre is upside down, it's tracks can't touch ground and it is now immobilised, and all its weapons are pointing down to the ground. Hooray for the heroes!

Not quite. At this point Bimon says that the Ogre opens up a missile launch silo on its top (now facing the ground) and fires a nuke. Not some pissant tac-nuke neither. A 100d6 Killing Damage beast.

That ended that campaign.

The thread rules ask for a possible solution... 

Bimon is a good friend, although I haven't seen him in years, as we live far apart. I'd like to say he got less adversarial as a GM over time but not last time I heard about one of his games, a DnD3.5 game. Another friend (let's call him Mr. Wobbles) who was playing had gamed the system to make the unkillable character. Every build option had gone into being unkillable. Character couldn't do much except survive. And Mr. Wobbles had immense fun running his character around madly staying alive while every other player went through half a dozen or so PCs across the course of the module. Bimon by all accounts had a great deal of fun trying to kill the unkillable without breaking the rules. Wins all round.

Gosh this anecdote went on a bit.

38 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Anyway, his action game?  It was a hand-copied (in pencil, no less) rules book of Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes.

 

 

Man, of all the games to plagiarise...

(But back then I really liked Palladium Fantasy, so who am I to talk?)

The following is not really trauma worthy, but one of those things that gives me an eye twitch when I think about it.

I was starting up a new DnD3 campaign; I'd found players using Meetup. So a bunch of brand new people, basically all new to one another. I asked everyone to draw up their characters and, if they could, give me a little back story to play with as GM I'd appreciate it. "But keep in mind you're first level, so no dragon slaying. Hah hah."

Cue a couple of them writing essays on being the greatest thieves in the kingdom (the pair were a couple and the backstory read like bad slash fiction) and another guy being the most feared pirate captain in the world. None of this is that bad. I mean, I'd rather have that than no effort at backstory at all. But still I get the eye twitch when I think about it.

Trying to think of some good tales from my gaming past...

Long, long ago I was running a Shadowrun campaign. One day the guys were over (my house was the local drop in centre for gamers) and we were setting up to play the next installment of the adventure, a published one called Mercurial. I was wandering about looking for the adventure booklet. I eventually found it in the hands of one of the players who was happily reading it, hidden inside the cover of a magazine (just like the old cliche of a Playboy inside another magazine cover.) He was just sitting there reading the whole thing cover to cover. I was of course pretty annoyed and kicked him from the game. We were still friends, but he dropped out of gaming at this point, and since gaming was pretty much my entire life we didn't actually see much of one another thereafter.

On 9/14/2019 at 2:30 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Don't sweat it.

 

I'm halfway teasing you.  I liked the game for a bit, and jerks are jerks no matter where you're doing it.  (note my frequent call outs to Davien, a player from '79 to '84, when we just couldn't take him anymore and booted him out)

 

 

Ooh, dish the deets on this Davien. I love me some gossip about total strangers.

On the Vampire attracting douche nozzels: not in my private games that I played in all those years ago. But I hear tales from friends on mine who are in the organised Vampire play (y'know the sort of thing, like Living Greyhawk, Pathfinder Society, whatever the current DND one is called.) Sounds like a giant $#!t fight of passive aggressive knob heads. People just doing their level best to crap on one another, using and abusing the meta-game rules to do so. (My friends were every bit a part of this $#!tty behaviour from what they were telling me.) Actually, now I think about it, it sounds a lot like politics.

9 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

Tsk. Alcohol.

Oh yes, dwarven beer. Terrible, terrible. 😛

I played through Sunless Citadel last year. We didn't have much trouble with the final fight, despite having an under-powered party (a rogue, a druid, and a samurai. Samurai are basically a fighter with fewer feats.) What saved us was the druid had used an Animal Friendship spell on the big mama rat on level one. She did about half the killing by herself. Love ol' mama rat. We also had Meepo with us. After all the adventuring was over we got him a job as live in barman at our local.

I'm happy to GM HERO. 😄

 especially if I never have to GM pathfinder again!

On 9/4/2019 at 3:10 AM, Gauntlet said:

Damn, I really started an argument!!!!!

Congratulations! The board thanks you. Seriously. People round here love a good argument about finicky bits of the system.

As to the actual point of the thread: you're correct, skill levels are definitely not priced well, as the other posters here have said. I'm sure it's been said on these forums in the past too.

In my Fantasy Hero Basic I was trying to price skill levels in such a way that they are worth the buying. Truth is, I'm not sure I succeeded. Actually, I'm pretty sure I didn't succeed. 

I guess I'll sit down and do a price comparison and see if I can come up with a rejigging that appeals to me.

My current project is working out campaign guidelines for a Legend of the 5 Rings game. I'm using a tier based system to put limits on characteristics, skills, OCV, DCV, Damage Classes, etc. But I want to allow characters to exceed these limits in given areas (basically a class system but I prefer the term "niches.") So I'm letting characters purchase pre-designed packages that are basically skill levels, with characters being allowed to exceed tier limits by whatever is included in the package. So a use for skill levels that may make them worth the cost. My idea waits to be tested.

(Hope this makes sense, written in a hurry.)

9 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

So far I've done Return of the Runelords (didn't enjoy it very much) and War for the Crown. 

 

This one was War for the Crown - which was great.

 

Lots of political intrigue, investigation with the occasional dungeon crawl or extended combat.  They really play up the reputation and political power aspects as well as some city building early on.

 

It is a great mix of things to do in a world that is much more than a dungeon crawl.  I highly recommend that particular adventure.

 

Luckily I do simple math very quickly in my head so I generated some formulas for converting the creatures on the fly and it worked out pretty well.

 

 

Thanks for the recommendation. In the past I've looked at War for the Crown and was wondering if it was worth getting and converting.

I guess your players have no problem playing HERO instead of Pathfinder? I suspect that some of my players will be reluctant to learn a new system.

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

I'll have to take your word for it.  

 

A few decades back, I dated a gal who was a huge Dylan fan.  I'm pretty sure in the course of those three years, I heard (many, many times) every cussed thing he ever recorded.  From all the uncounted hours of direct exposure to his work, I think I actually understood a grand total of six or seven words.  The rest of it was a trapped housefly, buzzing angrily from deep within some unfortunate guy's sinus cavity.

 

 

lol. 🤣

Fair enough.

54 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

I finally understand what the young guys at the plant actually _mean_ when they say "that is the whitest whiteness that has ever been whited."    

 

Wow. It is. It really is.

55 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

In related news, I just discovered that the board will not let you post every single thing Bob Dylan ever recorded....  

 

But here I gotta disagree. Somewhat. Tangled Up in Blue is great song. In fact I'd say there's a bunch of Dylan B-sides that are good. But I almost never listen to the A-sides.

On 8/30/2019 at 6:11 AM, ScrewySquirrel said:

"Believe in justice, and hold a determination to fist."

Is this quote accurate?

Coz if it is I'm struggling hard to contain my puerile sniggers.

3 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

On the final boss fight of the pathfinder campaign I was taking my HERO players through they were so caught up in the encounter that they had completely forgotten the thing they were supposed to do to make the encounter much easier.

 

Mr. Fox - what adventure path was it? Also how well- and how easy- was it adapted to HERO? I'd much prefer to run the things in HERO.

Coz I neeeeeeeed to get away from Pathfinder before I go effin nuts.

5 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Oh, and from what I could see, Lewis doesn't seem to be fat in the movie. A little chubby, but not fat.

 

Dean Shomshak

That's Hollywood Fat.

14 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

I think all of this means that the GM needs to think through what it means to live in a world where there is magic.  In such a world is a drought purely meteorological or does it mean that there are magical forces at work that might take against those who counter their drought?  Are there competing divine forces at play?  Obviously the odd little creation of water to ameliorate the edge of the drought for people is overlooked but a concerted effort to counter the effects of the drought might find that certain divine magics are blocked or drought-beating clerics might find themselves subject to the personal attention of divine messengers who want this to stop.

 

So many stories can come from players thinking that they can exploit magical abilities without thinking through the metaphysical consequences.  I think I would refrain from countering magical abuse with scientific explanations...

 

🙂

 

Doc

Very good point.

10 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Create Water unlimited times makes for a new riff on old questions.  When a 5th level cleric can cure any disease at least once a day, how many are there, why don't we train more if there are not enough, and why do we still have illnesses?

An oft debated point on DnD forums. Almost inevitably segues into (or from) the Wall of Iron spell making iron mining/refining obsolete.

6 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

It's a right bastard, that deity.

By the name of Incabulos in standard DnD/GReyhawk, IIRC.

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

And what are the consequences if there are people out there (possibly a lot of them) who can create water out of thin air? Forget showers -- what about literal rainmakers who go around irrigating farms for a price in the middle of a drought? Does the supply of water in the world remain limited? Will the water table eventually be overwhelmed by all the new moisture to the point that affects the overall climate, making the world wetter as a whole?

Maybe Create Water only condenses water from the air in the immediate vicinity. Although, if that were the case there'd be a limit on it, which there isn't.

Maybe the spell conjures water from elsewhere in the world and distills it in the process.

As for saving drought stricken areas, yeah, it's the bomb. Better living through magic and all that.

The official description (DnD 3/PF)  of Create Food & Water describes the food as bland and flavourless. So there's still good reason to go to the tavern. And beer, obviously.