TSandman

Re: Dragons Well, I'm biased... I'm starting an Iron Kingdomesque campaign and there, Dragons are few and far between... all descendent of Lord Toruk (not a god, but powerfull enough to give magic to his "priests", mostly Necromancy and Necrotech)... They're all Unique and to give you an idea of the power they have, the "lamest" is, in D&D terms, CR 30. Drakes takes the place of "regular" dragons...

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated traitor!

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated CoC is also one of the few games where the Player *wants* to retire his character instead of having him going raving mad in the middle of an adventure (and keep him as an NPC for the GM..)

Re: Skunks Had to re-read what you had written... I thought you wanted the character to have a Skunk-type Attack (ie: smell REALLY bad ;p) If you want *real* skunk to show up, I'd go Daltwisney's way, a summon. could be funny if the character had a Change Environment (Smells Really Bad) to cause other persons to have some problem around him ;p I wouldn't say that you *SHOULD*, but having bought it, I'd say it *IS* a really good book... ~500 pages of Goodness and many power examples for beasts/animals.. .. so maybe you should

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated When you go to a Con and you see a few really obscure RPG being demoed, it is sometimes played by fans of that RPG, but mostly by curious gamers who likes to try stuff. There is the gamer who "Collects RPG" in the sense of having many RPGs/supplements from almost everything and those who "collects RPGs" in the sense of having everything of a few RPGs... Both are Gamers, but one is most likely to say XYZ is the best and ignore the rest...

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated TOASTER: Howdy doodly do! How’s it going? I’m Talkie, Talkie Toaster, your chirpy breakfast companion. Talkie’s the name, toasting’s the game. Anyone like any toast? LISTER: Look, I don’t want any toast, and he doesn’t want any toast. In fact, no one around here wants any toast. Not now, not ever. No toast! TOASTER: How ’bout a muffin? LISTER: Or muffins! Or muffins! We don’t like muffins around here! We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes, and no hot cross buns, and definitely no smegging flapjacks! TOASTER: Ah, so you’re a waffle man!

Re: A Whole New World I'd suggest reading the page about Discworld ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_(world) ) either for ideas-to-do or not-to-do At least you'll be aware of it if a player mentions it...

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated When Luck (as in dice rolling) or any competition, the majority of times, Higher is Better... Anyways, those having problems with Rolling Low might not be the ones who plays golf, as those asking why HERO doesn't use D20 most probably do not play anything else than the "usual suspect"...

Re: Circle of Protection Tough Barrier coupled with a Suppress AoE vs "effects from Evils"?

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated I must Index. Lack of Index is the mind-killer. Lack of Index is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will finish my Index. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Index has gone there will be Everything. Only It will remain.

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated For me, HERO is to D&D as Lego is to GI-Joe... One is quick and easy to play with, while with the other, you can have lot of fun with the unfinished product...

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated Oh, but I agree with you... but then, there is a part of the gaming population that don't understand why HERO doesn't use a 20 sided die... "as most of them do"

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

Re: Need input on how to build Iron Kingdom troll regen... I guess I'll use it more as a plot device than anything else... the Whelps are not as strong as the troll that spawned them and depending on the troll type, can take from a few minutes to a few days to form. they're of no immediate help/hindrance for either the troll nor the other that would be fighting it...

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated That's the path I have taken with my group... I asked them what they wanted and built them characters, which I revised with them afterward. as it's our first "official" Hero game (we've tried once before but it was only a tranfer of another campain into HERO... too many relics of the old ) they want to see what they can do with what they have right now... I'm fortunate that I have another player who read the books (it's the other one pushing the group for HERO) who can help me, as you've had yourself. Maybe the players cannot come up with their character fully formed, but at least, they can play what they want (and not being limited to a race/class/clan/house/template mix). when this happens and they see that what they have is really what they asked for, or the basics of what they ask that will just need a few XP to become it, they'll want to play it. I've seen enough threads on the boards to see that it's mostly irritating on those comming form an Always Roll High game... and many that just used the equivalent Roll-High for Hero (it does exists, it's a simple mathematical manipulation. This can be done after creating the character in HD... all you need is to replace the xx- for yy+ using the formula, or better, a small chart that gives it all to you... would be nicer if HD would let you swap from Roll-High to Roll-Low, but unless you can convice Simon to implement such an option...

Re: The HERO Basic Game Box And what does HERO not being GURPS have to do with it? Taking your reasons for not having PDF to the extreme would be "Since D&D prints book and HERO is not D&D, should DOJ continue to print Books?" I've hang around my FLGS long enough to see that Books that aren't D&D attracks much less players and that Big Books attracts even less, whatever the system. Box set even less (been ages since I've seen many RPG box set... many gamers didn't like what Fantasy Flight did with their latest Warhammer Fantasy RPG - putting it in a box set) A "Virtual Box Set" might be nice... even if it's only a few PDF that is put together to form a Startup Bundle for "newbies". Another way would be having a bundle made up of already printed stuff (can be put together "on-demand") HERO presently does well, but it's still a niche player. trying to hook-up new players should be by giving them a low cost of entry into that big family. PDF is one way for that (but not the only way).

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated Maybe, maybe not... Hero is complex, not complicated... The Books are full of Crunch, but to keep it digestible, it needs redundancy(1) in the text (clarification, examples, etc). As it is more building blocks than finished rpg system, it has a lot of flexibility, but it comes at a cost. The more Redundancy there is the easier you can grasp the info but the more space it takes up. HERO is so different from the "average" RPG that it has to explain a lot. It's not just "pick a bloodline and a clan, distribute a few points". If you know other RPGs, then you have to "unlearn" many concept they taught you. If you knew nothing at all about other RPG and picked up HERO on a whim, then you have a whole world (RPGs) to take in and learn about. None is quick and easy. (I was "lucky", I already had unlearned D&D when bending my mind around Mage) Once you "get" the paradigm you have to use, everything starts to fall in its own place and make sense. Now, being able to distillate the essence of HERO so it is not daunting for newcommers is not easy. 6th has cleaned up things quite a bit and there is still work that could be done. How much and how it would be done, I do not know. (1) redundancy in the linguistic sense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy_(linguistics)

Re: Need input on how to build Iron Kingdom troll regen... I didn't think about the Always-On limitation still getting the hang of things and was scrolling down the limitation lists in HD The trick is that the Whelps take time to mature, depending on the type of troll (normally, it takes days for them to be nothing but a nuisance/food) but not *that* a nuisance (the "mother" can always easily kill the whelps.) Thing is... would adventurers do it? A battlefield where trolls were could be... Ugly afterwards... Also, in 6E1-395, it was stated that Unified Power MUST be taken to represent the fact that they are all aspects/facets of one over-arching meta-power. maybe I haven't understood it as I should have ? if their Regen ever gets negated (with magic, for example) then whelps would not form either... So I get that it would depend on the Whelps being either a side-effect or an additional power. Maybe just remove the side effect would fix things up a bit

Re: The HERO Basic Game Box Since many are using the web to search/shop for RPGs nowadays, why not have those bundles available via PDF and/or Print On Demand (just have it shipped directly to the customer)? Alleviates the need for a minimum print run to have reasonable price, and that doesn't take up a lot of warehouse space either. Incidentally, having maps that could be printer on normal paper (just needing some trimming of the margins and a bit of tape to hold it) would be very nice for beginners

Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

Re: Need input on how to build Iron Kingdom troll regen... I had put it at Uncommon... even tho people know that Trolls are less resistant to those, they rarely pack Acid expressly for those encounter... as for fire, well.. those Trolls love Swampy areas I haven't read the APG (I have the PDF, just wanted to be familiar with the regular rules before heading there) but it seems to fit the bill quite nicely (doesn't give a lot of point break for that particular power, but greatly simplifies everything!) I treat it the same way Exactly... tho I have some reserve for that (more in a moment) Right now, here's what I have: Cost Descr. 27 Troll Regeneration: (Total: 110 AP, 27 Real) Regeneration (1 BODY per Minute), (43 AP, 17 Real) Can Heal Limbs, Inherent (+1/4) Uncontrolled (+1/2) Always On (-1/2) Does Not Work vs Fire & Acid (-1/2) Porportional (x2) (very common) (Regenerative capacity Doubles when eating a lot of food; +1/2) Unified Power (Troll Regeneration; -1/4) Side Effects (Spawns Whelp whenever lost limb not reattached within 1 minute; -1/4) (Real Cost: 13) Spawn Whelps - Summon 150-point Whelps (67 AP, 10 Real) Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) Trigger (Whenever Severed Limb not reattached within 1 min; +3/4) Extra Time (1d6 Day, -4) OAF Expendable (Difficult to obtain new Focus; Severed Troll Limb; -1 1/4) Unified Power (Troll Regeneration; -1/4) Since Summon is typically for a certain number of Tasks, how would you go about getting a summon that lasts for months, where the summonee is free to do what it pleases it(but sometime the summoner can just bully it to do what it needs, or even simply snack on it)?

Hullo everyone... I've started doing my Iron-Kingdom Hero games with my long-time gang and after two games to get the "feel" of Hero, I'm taking some of my vacation time to actually put numbers and stats on some of the setting's beasts... I'm now quite used to Hero Designer but there is still some grey areas on how to pu-up those powers themselves, before inputing them into HD... Take for example the Iron Kingdom Troll... which bears resemblance to the D&D troll only in name. Its regeneration powers are quite... hum... unique. and so straight Regen is not enough. Here is the gist of it: They can regenerate any damages except some type of attacks (depending on the troll type), forex: Fire and Acid for "regular" trolls They regenerate faster while eating lots of food They can reattach a limb immediately if done within 1 min. of it being cut-off If not, a brand new limb begins to grow and is functionnal again in a about 30 mins If the limb that was not reattached will (if not too severly damaged) Spawn a Troll Whelp (smaller version of the troll, with limited abilities (cannot spawn other whelps) and lifespan (They're a good source of snacks for Trolls needing food for regen - no wonder the Trolls have been described as "Chaotic Hungry" ) Right now I mainly have that as a compound power (normal regen + eating regen + spawning whelps), as each can happens simultaneously, but I was wondering if there was a better way to do that Any ideas?