Flute

Re: WWYCD Fantasy HERO Edition #1: The Princess Shell Game It's time for a suppress magic aura? Of course this is HERO, so just to be unconventional they are probably all the real princess, the bad guy has Duplication with "usable on others"?

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield? Yup ... some players just are like that. Last game one of the PC's got "really annoyed" with an NPC whom our GM had earlier described as "having a small standing army defending his estate". The PC promptly attacked said estate, on his own, without telling anyone else in the party what he was going to do, and without anything resembling a plan. It would have been much better (if still quite unwise) if he had at least first found some of his 10 NPC guardsmen to go too. Well... let's just say that the PC is trying to figure out his new character for next session. If he saw a cave with a sign "Danger, dragon, go back, certain death this way!" I'm certain he would simply walk in, he wouldn't even discuss it with the party first.

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield? If you want to have your party actually defeat a dragon, make it "a young one". That way if with hindsight it was too easy you can say it was the runt of the litter and must have been cast out of it's natural habitat for being so inept. If it proved too hard ... well, that's just fine too. I would never rail-road characters into fighting a dragon, it's so much more fun when they walk past all the GM signs that say "danger, here be dragons" and they choose to charge in of their own free will. Obviously that approach works much better with very experienced players, as newer players will naturally tend to assume if you mentioned something it's because you intend for them to interact with it in the storyline. My current GM took that approach in our D&D story before he converted the campaign over to HERO system. He didn't bother with the challenge rating system: if we felt like charging off into the forest, finding and attacking an orc warcamp far above our ability and that had nothing in particular to do with the story, rather than just moving discretely past to actually do our mission, well that was our call. He did use the classic GM flags to warn us, but well, you know how players can be ... So I suppose a simple thing is that if you want to have the party go up against a *real* dragon, plan for what you are intending to happen if the dragon wins hands down. New characters? New campaign? Personally I don't like any kind of "cheat death" option with dragons - you go into their lair uninvited and lose, well ... they're carnivores

Re: Fantasy Hero Don't underestimate the value of taking an interesting scene or setting from a past game you have played, and just use that, so the focus is on the characters and system, rather than the setting. It can really help to emphasize that HERO is flexible, combat can be really lethal (seriously reduce the number of any NPC enemy groups for early encounters, e.g. "a lone orc scout" first.), and yes you can make the bad guys flee. It's a flexible system, allow your imagination to take you where you want to be - including taking you back to the settings you were using, if you want to, just with far deeper and more interesting characters.

Re: Change the focus from KO to Killing I'm not that familiar with the mechanics, but in the fantasy setting our current game is run in, low-magic and poverty make for a fairly lethal combination that doesn't feel "forced", and also has a pretty gritty-realism. When almost all the NPCs have no magical protection / powers, their resistances to magical damage players often have is "not good". In many fantasy settings most people cannot afford decent armour, either. Hit locations, swords/blades/axes, and a significant lack of helmets does not end well if you get hit in the head.

Re: Anyone have stats for a D&D3.5 style pegasus? Got it in one Enternal_sage. I had considered adding wings to the light warhorse on p 454 of the core rule book, but that leads to ... a warhorse with wings, rather than a pegasus. It is the few special powers and intelligence that makes the D&D3.5 style pegasus much more interesting to play with, but at the same time it's not a creature thats so devastating in combat that it is seriously unbalancing. In terms of conversion, it was continuing the style and story, but characters were remade using the HERO rules following ideas, not exact class conversions. The result was very much still a D&D party "feel" , the mage is a mage still (with magic missile!), the rouges are definitely rogues (sneak attack included), and my healer went from a druid to a paladin/priest, mainly because in the 3.5 game the party had taken to wanting to take my wolf animal companion along and leave me at home, because the wolf hit things but I never could. So far (10 sessions in) the pegasus actually has been the D&D3.5 pegasus, literally. It's also never been in an actual fight, although it has been quite effective in scaring away superstitious commoners and generally being a very interesting addition to the game. The way the story is unfolding it seems almost inevitable that someone is going to try to kidnap the poor thing, so my GM happily mentioned that I should find stats for one, which led me ... here

Re: Anyone have stats for a D&D3.5 style pegasus? Thank you!

Re: Why horses? Horses are just easiest to relate to, and can have great personalities for use in RPGs without getting in the way, unless you want them too of course. Nothing like a stubborn horse or one with a habit of biting its rider. Personally my favorite mount is a pegasus with a side-saddle, although I admit getting dismounted is seriously something to worry about with one of those! And the other thing with mounts, don't forget to decide whether side-saddles are in use: they have style, and let you wear a real dress rather than just riding dresses. In my experience that's not usually an issue for most players who default to as much armour as they can get and military saddles, but in terms of your world it can add a nice subtle touch.

Our GM changed our Thieves World campaign over from D&D 3.5 to the HERO system. Overall the change has been great in terms of depth of the game, particularly as the characters are much richer and less prone to charging into combat without thinking about it first. But the change leaves me with a question: anyone have HERO stats for a D&D 3.5 style pegasus? I have noticed the dragons appearing from Shadowcat's contributions on Killershrike's site, but have yet to track down a pegasus. (p.s. I don't have the HERO designer).