drunkonduty

In D&D the Cleric is a bit of an aberration, or system artifact.  It's not something that immediately jumps out when you thought about pre-D&D fantasy genres, in which healing would be a either a big deal (quest for the blue rose to save the King from the assassin's rare & deadly poison) or a throwaway detail ("You're wounded. We have a flower in Colchis which heals and soothes..."), not the prime contribution of a main character who is doing it in every scene.
 
D&D hit points do capture the dynamics of a cinematic battle, in which the monster comes on strong, the hero reels, recovers, and goes on to vanquish it.  They do it with the Cleric class or healing potion as a sort of ugly kludge, but they do it, and very successfully over many years. (briefly, D&D came up with a less ugly kludge in which a new class called a 'Warlord' helped the party rally with inspiration instead of divine intervention, but that's fallen by the wayside).
 
Bottom line, though, Hero has STN & REC, so you don't need a D&D-style healer to get that same heroic dynamic.

I think that in Fantasy Hero one has the option to step away from the paradigms of D&D and handle things differently.
Clerics or Divine magic might be one of them.
 
First off one would not have to be a cleric or ordained priest of God or a god depending on your game to cast divine spells.  Spells that heal or control the undead or drive out demons or many of the things we associate with a Priest could be learned and cast by anyone.  The spells themselves would be relatively easy to learn as opposed to a mage's spell. To create magic a mage has to invent it, learn the formula, collect the correct materials, place them in the right order, speak the power words in the correct cadence etc.  All of this requires intelligence and maybe a strong internal will to control the magic (EGO or PRE in Hero system).
 
Divine magic and spells would work differently.  The formula might exist but it would not be something that was invented or thought out.  Instead it would be essentially a prayer.  Their might be formula and materials but they would not necessarily have a correct order measured out scientifically.  Instead they require a person who is devout, who is calling upon the magic for a holy purpose and might not even be asking for a defined effect,  The divine caster might utter a prayer for guidance in handling their enemy.  This might be a bonus number of skill levels usable for a set time or an aid to STR or some similar effect but it might also be a storm slowing the enemy down or the cleric given a bonus to a Persuasion skill at the right time if they attempt to sue for a truce.  The cleric or saint or devout lay person may not know what the effect will be.
 
In this regard much of "divine magic" would be a Variable power pool with a limitation no conscious control at the -1 level.  You can call for it but you have no control over what it will be.
 
This would mean that maybe there are only a few actual spells a "cleric" could learn and cast by praying for it and the rest is based on a plea to the deity with required skill rolls etc.
 
You could even state that every devout person has a faith pool at a minimum level that is difficult to get to work but can do anything the DM requires when needed.  Players who want some control over it could be more devout and thus buy off limitations or gain a Faith Power Skill to get better at controlling it and maybe one or two effects they can use without need for rolls as they see fit so long as they follow a psychological limitation to keep the faith and not go against their god or GOD. 

I dunno. There are plenty of places where women can own guns. That doesn't seem to have changed the dynamic much in itself. Power can lead to fear of individuals, but not respect for a group. Understanding seems to have been a more effective tool for that purpose. Although some people still refuse to understand...

It's like "street level" fantasy.
 
Otherworldly hunter stalking the streets at night. The local law can't seem to stop it.
 
The axe gang are starting to consolidate power near the docks and the organized crime family isn't happy about it.
 
A sickness is starting to spread in the slums that is particularly resilient. Local politicians don't seem to care, maybe the heroes can help...
 

When I ran a Valdorian Age campaign it kind of organically grew into a campaign where the PCs had to organize and plan the defense of the free city of Elweir.  At the end of the campaign we played out a pseudo war-game to represent the battle between the two forces and then a separate session to handle the individual PC battles that took place.  I tried to set up the final battle so it was like the movie LOTR battles where you see the masses of combatants and then 'zoom' into individual battles as well.
 
The PCs started out just dealing with their individual issues that were tangentially related.  They had to create alliances between different political groups, local military and bandits, and religious leaders.  In the beginning no one believed them about what was coming.  VA doesn't have a lot of 'big flashy' magic and there are a bunch of monsters running around.  Also no one in the group had read any of the GoT books or see the TV shows at this point in time.  The bad guy's army was almost entirely made up of undead.  The PCs were able to capture a few and show them to the populace at the 'arena'.  That was when things changed.  It took both game years and calendar years to bring about.  We played 2 or 3 Sundays a month.

How about something dealing with the local Miller? Perhaps some one is trying to damn the water? Perhaps he needs something on the wheel fixed but the local carpenter is in cahoots with the dammer? 

Are you talking about events that take place at the level of the Kings like say the Three Musketeers?  Ordinary soldiers caught up in high level intrigues? 
   There are a number of stories/instances where the Big Shots draft the little guy into doing the dirty work.

Some ideas to spice up generic adventures:
-Hostage rescue situation - either in a hot "just happened" chase situation, or a longer negotiation/investigation/infiltration type scenario
-Friendly/neutral NPCs are turning bad in some non-too-obvious way and the party has to find and "cure" them (whatever you decide that means)
-A rival group has been assigned to the same task, so it's a race to achieve the objective first and get the credit/reward
-The main mission turns out to be a trick by a rival person to get the party to do the hard work and steal the reward/credit at the end - they find out about it at some stage if they find the right clues so need to deal with that afterwards
-Collapsing building/caves put a frantic and random time factor to the mission

Incantations-- Darkness to sound (Silence 15' radius)
                        Choking gas
                         Tackle the mage as he is speaking ( make an ego roll to finish the incantation)
                          Etc
 
Gestures --Choking gas
                   Tackle the mage as he is speaking ( make an ego roll to finish the incantation)
                    Entangles
                    Knock down / Knock back attacks
                   etc

Well, the cliche in fantasy is to bind the hands and mouth of captive wizards so they can’t gesture mystically or incant a spell.  In comics, Zatanna was taken out of a brawl when the Justice League took on Deathstroke by his making sure to hit her in the throat fast to keep her from using her backwards spoken magic.

Oh, right. For reference, assault is quoting from "The Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti.
 
Backwards up the mossy glen
Turned and trooped the goblin men,
With their shrill, repeated cry,
"Come buy, come buy."
 
In similar vein is William Butler Yeats' "The Stolen Child":
Come away, O human child!
To the water and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
 
I think it's often a good idea to go back to source material, or to see what great artists have done with it and steal shamelessly from them.
 
Dean Shomshak

If you ever read Corum, Goffanon was a dwarf. A dwarf giant, but a dwarf nonetheless.

Diderot was an 18th century Enlightenment philosopher and intellectual precursor to the French revolution.
 
I prefer not to draw from modern fantasy literature - most of it sucks, and a lot of it is riddled with libertarianism.

Likewise, hopeful but wary.
 
I think when JMS said, "No children or cute robots," he meant as ongoing characters. I hope he sticks to that: There are children on the station, yes, but the same child is not turning up week after week, inexplicaly involved in the serious business of competent adults.
 
Especially, please, no Magic Genius Kid character, a la Wesley Crusher.
 
In the same vein, let any robots be practical machines serving practical purposes, not comic relief. Goodness knows one can tell plenty of serious stories about robot characters, and I wouldn't mind seeing JMS do so, but B5 already has so much to do there would scarcely seem to be room. I suppose, though, a new series could give glimpses of issues and events going on elsewhere.
 
OPn a more frivolous side, remember the ep where Delenn appeared in a dream doing a Tarpt reading? I'd already designed a B5 Tarot by then, and I know I'm not the only person to have done so.
 
EDIT: I revised the B5 Tarot as seasons passed.Here's the final version:
 
THE BABYLON-5 TAROT
 
The Fool Zathras
The Magician Kosh
The High Priestess Delenn
The Empress Ivanova or Lockley
The Emperor Sheridan
The Hierophant Valen
The Lovers Shadow and Vorlon
The Chariot Marcus
Justice Garibaldi
The Hermit Mr. Sebastian, his cane glowing
The Wheel of Fortune Londo
Strength Lyta
The Hanged Man G’Kar
Death Bester (riding over William Edgars)
Temperance Franklin
The Devil Mr. Morden (with Londo and Anna Sheridan in chains)
The Lightning-Struck Tower Whitestar crashing on Z’Ha’Dum
The Star Lennier
The Moon Talia Winters
The Sun Vir
Judgment Lorien
The World Babylon-5, superimposed on Draal in the Great Machine
 
Dean Shomshak

There's been a lot of sturm und drang online about the new Babylon 5 series being "too woke" because it's on CW. In response, someone pointed out that the original series was essentially the story of an interracial couple fighting fascists in space.

My first thought when hearing some of the original cast would be involved was - there are original cast left?
Also, I didnt know Claudia had a sister.
I like others am glad JMS is involved, I hope he has the power to push through his vision, whatever it is and I fear what will be done with it.
I have enjoyed some of the CW stuff (I like most of the superhero stuff, though I know others do not) though I havent watched any of the ones that would be straight teen drama (Riverdale, Nancy Drew etc).
Then I went and looked at PTEN to remind myself what was there and realized I liked all 4 series they did - B5, Pointman, Time TRax and Kung Fu: the legend continues. not saying they were great, but fun entertainment.

Because THAT was a beloved classic?  The only interesting things about the original show was that it was called 'The Kato Show' in China, and that the writers would sometimes use the same jokes in both Batman and the Hornet.
 

I used to run Teen Champions at Cons.  I did a lot of summer movie style games.  The kaiju game with Sharkoctopus.  The Jason Vorhees game.  The Christmas theme game with Krampus.  A lot of teen horror movies turn into great combat fodder, especially when mixed together (imagine fighting Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, deadites/zombies, and Edward Cullen! XD )
 

I'm weirdly into Teen drama shows.  The one I'm enjoying at the moment is "Never Have I Ever", the story of a Hindu Indian girl going to highschool in California.  Narrated by John McEnroe as himself, who keeps comparing her high school drama to his rather colorful professional tennis career.  It weirdly captures the drama of teen age life.

I have run out of rep, Track, but you're welcome, Sir.
 
I think most of you know I am not the biggest fan D&D ever had, but for further amusement:
 
with regard to alignment, I have quite routinely taken "chaotic" and "generally by accident" to be sort of interchangeable.    
 
 
 

Agents power levels depends on the needs of the group in question and campaign needs.
 
Panther Claw and Galactor are both made up of mostly faceless minions, as the focus is basically on the Monster of the Week (Cutie Honey, but can be applied to any Sentai or fighting Magical Girl campaign) or the Mecha of the Week (Gatchaman, and any Sentai based game...). The agents are basically a cake walk (depending on the show, all and every agent of Panther Claw are androids so Cutie Honey doesn't have to worry about killing real people, Gatchaman doesn't really worry that they are outright murdering Galactor agents because it is kill or be killed.)
 
Genocide agents are notorious for being strong, mostly because beyond the Minutemen robots they can't have a "supervillain branch" without stretching believability too much. (Broken mutant slaves? Possible but unlikely. Power suits? Doable, but why limit them to a single person. Cyborg? Again a possibility. Politicians? This is IHA territory.)
 
VIPER is a perfect example of having cake and eating it. There agent arm is powerful but not overpowering. And they have the Dragon Branch, which you can introduce whoever in the ranks then take them away only to be replaced by whoever you choose. 
 
I like the idea of WITCH agents using "wands" (energy guns which don't look like guns), flying broom shaped platforms, lightbending cloaks (invisibly only when they activate them and do not attack). But that is simply using the images of witches to their advantage. The cloaks can compensate for the fact that the group doesn't have a practically large faceless goon pool to draw from. (Same for the platforms...there is something to be said about Invisibility and freedom of movement). True magic, biological weapons, walking chemical factories are best left to the group mothers (leadership/supervillain pool).
 
I'm rambling on. Forgive me. 

I figure if you are going to play Champions half the fun is setting it in the Champions Universe!

This is a sort of "Sequel" game to an old Champions Campaign that ran for over 25 years.  All my current players played in that game and actually interacted with the "by the book" version of Ravenswood so in this game I advanced the Timeline for the new characters to keep it contemporary. 

Ms. Crone's 5E writeup mentioned that she knew she would be Headmistress and I knew there was going to be a lot of time shennanigans in my PC's future so why not stick to the Canon & reap the rewards?   (everyone keeps going on about to teenagers about how they are choosing their future, so I'm having several different futures show up with opinions.  I like that Headmistress Timmons has insight into what will be but comes by it differently than "conventional" time travelers.  It makes her a great Mentor figure in that she can help but can't solve the problems directly.)

As the old PCs had met the students statted out in Teen Champions and they have now graduated I also had to repopulate the school with "nontraditional" students of my own making.  But that is half the fun!

I've been running a Ravenswood game for several years now.  
 
The way I've been dealing with it is by:
- Getting the kids off campus (Dates, Movies, visiting parks, Music Shows)
- Having adventures come to them (hunteds who know where they live, ex-students with an axe to grind, shennanigans in the science labs & library)
- School Events (Rival Schools, Secret ID drama at the Spring Formal, Field Trips)
- Family (One PC's father is hunted by Viper, another is the son of a Supervillain, several NPCs are the children of Heros)
 
I've found that you have to get out of the "Mayor calls the PCs on the Red Batphone" type of adventures with teenagers.  I lean into the drama of highschool.  Not only do you want to get the right date for Prom, but she is being wooed by a "nontraditional" student from Von Drotte Academy (aka a mutant from Viper's school for budding supervillains).
We have a whole ongoing plot about the future version of one PC's first girlfriend who keeps attacking the PCs to prevent them from doing all the evil she says they do in the future.
 
Also: One PC paid points for a fake ID that lets them use Rideshare services to get around town.  It won't help them get to a superfight, but it lets them get to interesting locations.

I've got an intro scenario that I've run a couple of times - the opposition are all VIPER agents. I used the ones from the VIPER sourcebook. They're dug in behind some defences in a captured UNTIL base. Their mission is to get the macguffin out of the vault and get away through the basement and into sewer and subway tunnels.
 
I've run it twice and both times the heroes ripped through the agents with no problem. It could have gone a bit worse for the heroes but in both cases the heroes took the time to scout the opposition and so avoided the obvious traps. Fun was had by all!
 
So I guess that puts me in the "agents as window dressing" category. But window dressing that can be problematic in the right scenario.

I have found a real-life example of Chaotic Good.
 
 
Enjoy.