Shinobi Killfis

With great power comes great responsibility. I guess my point is for me the more open the system is the more it relies on the players and the DM to not take it too far. Whats too far is kind of table dependent. If it detracts from the fun of others at the table, for me that's when it goes to far.

Re: If you Had to Pick, ONE (already) Setting, to Run in, What is it? It has been about 1 year since I added to this thread and our group is kind of up in the air on what to do next. I think I am going to go with my 1st pick of Mass Effect. The codex provides me with enough crap to fill out details on the universe while leaving plenty open for me to mess with. I dig the universe concepts and I think the balance between space fantasy and more sci-fi is solid. It helps that at least 3 of us play the damn game a lot.

Re: Cinematic Martial Art, Hoist and Heave Thanks for the advice. We are follwoing most of that. For example the extra DCs for martial arts only really come into play in the campaign if you you have cyber/magic to give a reason for it, same with stats above 20. Since it is shadowrun there is magic, but it is still rooted in the real world. And while I got my idea for my character from anime(full metal alchemist, I'm sort of like Alex Armstrong), the 24 meter throw seemed a bit much. I might swap out the martial art if the GM okays it, maybe a normal martial grab to emphasize the grab part and if I want to throw I'll just stick to my 20 strength. 8 meters is still quite far.

So the hoist and heave maneuver is a grab and throw martial art move. The throw gets +20 to your strength for the distance thrown. Sounds cool but my current character has a 20 strength so I throw people 24 meters. In a anime style or super hero campaign I'd be all for it, but we are doing a shadowrun/cyberpunk style game and it seems to be a kind of absurd distance for a unmodified human to throw someone. The "realistic" throw distances in APG actually make it worse a lot worse. While for the move his effective strength is 40(30 more than needed to throw most humans), he still is a human being. Does anyone have a suggestion for a shorter throw guideline?

Re: Deflection Vs Area of Effect Yes, but it is odd that something this common requires so many hoops to jump through to reach. And while yes people can model their grenade to allow this, I have yet to see a modeled grenade, rocket etc in any published material that allows it. I may have missed it in dark champions or something, but can be deflected, designing it as a vehicle(except maybe at the nuke level), or a time delay I just don't see.

Re: Armour Piercing in Champions 6e On the other side though the +1/2 advantage for AoE hex given the old defenses made it somewhat useless on its own. You were effectively forced into a monstrous build if you wanted an AoE attack. And the you got the spiral down of doom where you ended up with a 2d6 EB NND, 10 shot autofire, o end, AoE radius or whatever. And it all started because you wanted your AoE to do more than nick the target. I mean sheesh a normal raidus AoE was 6d6 at 60AP in 4e. That would barely bother the martial artists and agents you fought. They may have gone too far with both lowering the average defenses and lowering the advantage costs of these things, but I like the +1/4 advantage for AP and AoE. It feels like they get used now, outside of a gimmick.

Re: My thief can't hit a firbolg? Just curious in this game how is magic bought? If it is with a multipower I'd ask if you can buy a sneaky bastard multipower or something, maybe make it requires a skill roll(stealth). You could boost damage with flat out buying killing attack with a focus common knife, needs to be attacked from behind or whatever other limitations. Start throwing in to the pool drains to movement for hamstring attacks, flashes(dust in the eyes), maybe some movement or invisibility etc. On a more basic level picking up a martial art would help a bit.

Re: Deflection Vs Area of Effect Thanks for the ideas. It just seems weird to me that something that I see in comics and movies so frequently is not possible in a system that handles as much as hero does. I mean throwing back grenades, the super hero catching the missile and redirecting it, heat vision shooting missiles out of the sky all are fairly common.

Re: 6th Ed House Rules The only way it seems to be used in my experience is in heroic games after you have maxed the stat. And then it pays off if you have 2+skills, but that is party due IMO to 2 for +1 in a skill is expensive as is. Also combat skill levels seem really expensive as well. I know they are flexible and can be used for increasing damage etc, but +1 overall level costs the same as +1ocv and DCV or +2 OCV. That seems out of whack. Again I don't see myself taking them unless I hit a normal characteristic cap.

As I understand it you can block at range with deflection, but since block does not work against area of effects you can't deflect area of effects. So how would you do that. I mean if I have the telekinetic ability to swat stuff out of the sky, why aren't I swatting the grenade away before it gets close enough to do any damage. If deflection does not work, what does if anything? The ability to stop a missile, or throw back a grenade is fairly iconic and yet I can't find a way to do it.

Re: Steampunk - Source Material It is more western to me, but Deadlands hits Steampunk ideas a bit.

The +1 advantage for autofire is based on not requiring a normal attack roll. If your area of effect is selective or non-selective while you make a non-normal attack roll to hit the area, you also have to make a normal attack roll to hit the targets in the area. Does it incur the extra +1 advantage penalty? Thank You.

Re: Fantasy Hero 6E - initial impressions I am curious in the magic section is it more general ideas on how to implement a magic system or doe sit have some fairly well fleshed out examples.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? This is a bit different than what has been discussed but balancing magic to norms got me thinking of the old days. I was thinking one of the balances of earlier games was the level system. In Basic D&D and even to a lesser extent 1-2e Mages were much weaker than other classes in the early game and then they equaled out and then they were the most powerful characters in the game. Part of this was due to the limited resource mechanic they had. When you have 3 spells you can do for the day you aren't that impressive, when you have 30 the daily limit isn't much of a limit. At the same time there spells also became more powerful. Hero doesn't really have that, it is not a class system so the mages don't start off at 100points while everyone else has 175 points. If you wanted to simulate that you could by making magical potential a expensive talent. If just to have the option to learn and use spells you had to buy a 50 point talent(Mage) the mages would likely start off weaker than everyone else. They may eventually grow past them but it would take a while. I would still insist on all magic having certain limitations and a school system, though I see no reason why people can't learn multiple schools. I'd let them keep the same magic skill but require a 3pt KS in each school, and I'd consider bringing back the fantasy hero limitations where you need a certain amount in a school in order to get the more difficult spells. Also the cast times and concentration of earlier D&D which was a solid limit. (using 2e)Lets say I am casting a cone of cold spell its a 5th level spell with an initiative modifier of +5, I think it was a d10 roll and then the lowest result won. Sounds fine but enemies easily could have negative modifiers instead of the +5 so they would almost always go first and have a decent chance to interrupt your spells. In Hero the closest I can come to that is exrtra segment and concentration 1/2. Extra segment works fairly well to show it being slower, even if its kind of clunky. But all I would really want from the concentration is the interrupt part of it not the 1/2 DCV. I kind of think extra time should have a modifier in it for that. I think if magic is going to have show/fight stopping effects it has to have limits like this so the norms can stop the magic from happening. In Basic D&D the halfling was the designated Mage killer in our group, with his initiative modifier he went first almost all the time he then just tagged the spellcaster for crap damage, but crap damage was all you needed to stop a spell.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? 4e was the first time I tried Fantasy Hero, earlier editions I stuck with super. The 4e Fantasy Hero did exactly that, they licensed? Shadow World from ICE and magic worked with schools. They even had a unique disadvantage for spells whcih kind of gave spells levels. Requires X amount spent in Fire magic etc. For every 10 points it was a -1/4 advantage I think. The first 10 points in fire magic was usually basic spells like detect magic, it may have had a basic attack and defense as well. The main books schools worked fairly well and most of Fantasy Hero companion, companion 2 it started getting a bit weird though. But one thing was it didn't use the full range of powers which I considered a good thing. There weren't many entangles etc. so most mages had a bigger tool kit than non mages but it wasn't an absurdly bigger one. All the spells were heavily limited. I really liked the system and if I were to start a new campaign I might use it, just updated to 6e.

Re: Building a Wall of Fire spell This may be cheesing it out a bit further than you like but 2d6 blast AoE line +1/2, constant, +1/2, cost end to activate +1/4, uncontrolled +1/2, sticky +1/2 AVLD(LS heat) + 1 1/2, does body +1. Anyways my thought it with sticky people who travel through the area catch on fire and take damage for the rest of the duration. Instead of AVLD you could go with penetrating and make it a killing attack.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? This. IMO the hard part is getting the non mages feeling like they can contribute equally even with there free 2d6 crossbow bolt damage. I'm big in giving non-mages multi powers as well. While flight might not be appropriate, Dots, via poison or bleeding attacks, drains vs armor for an armor breaker attack, flashes, and a wide range of other things are possible. And if the player is willing to assume there fighting abilities transcend normal people I'm okay with much crazier things than that. I generally try to make it so both groups get close to the same amount of possible limitations on there multipowers so things work out fairly evenly.

Re: Magic Sword help 6E wow thanks. I missed that in the APG. That is an awesome solution.

Re: Magic Sword help 6E Yeah I think I am going to suggest just taking the extra HKA with a limitation. I was thinking of something where the Strength minimum decreased as well, but I have no idea how to design buying off limitations.(A limitation on the limitation value which reduces the limitation?)

One of my fellow players is trying to build a magic sword. It is a big two handed sword and he wants it to do more damage as it draws blood or kills people over the day. The first thought from me was an Aid with trigger and a slowed rate of decay but I noticed there is no way in 6e to increase the maximum aid without increasing the dice. He wanted more of a slow build instead of hitting max after two kills so a 3-4d6 aid was not working. The other idea is to just buy what you want in killing attack but put a limit on the extra past normal two handed sword. Does anyone have a idea on what kind of limitation we are talking about roughly. Also any other ideas on how to build this.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear

Re: FH 6E 175pt Characters Just curious, one of the characters I glanced at was a hedge wizard. It was created through a variable power pool, only for spells known, change with spell book. How do you determine which spells are known? Is it just something that gets developed in the game, do they spend points some where and I missed it?

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear Where did I say people don't fight. I said the PCs would be seen as an assist to the town guard. The PCs might be closer to the touble and quite frankly training a new town guard is expensive so why have your people get killed when you can have an adventurer get killed in his place. I think I have logically defended mine just as well as you have yours. There are plenty of times in history where armed civilians were a fairly normal occurrence, and there societies and cities could survive. If it is illogical for them to exist, how come they were able to in history. Just because I may model my worlds after time periods where the citizen and civilian might be and frequently was armed does not mean my world is any less illogical than yours. Sure there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. I found the previous list especially all the taxes to be a fairly heavy handed player screwing. I might do it in a game where I was trying to parody current real life, but it would not be my norm. I thought it was funny to see all the taxes being levied in the book Another day another dungeon when the characters tried to transport there goods out of the dungeon(dwarf territory) into there home country. That isn't to say there might not be a good way to do this where it isn't player screwing but I think the taxes would be fairly hard to pull off.

Re: Help me write a spell... Well it kind of depends on how common magic in general and this spell are. I am probably not going to be calling extreme makeover, prison edition if 3 people on the planet know this spell. For the spell though I'd go with transform(AoEreally effing huge)full indirect. My problem with telekineses is even with fine manip I have problems seeing it unlocking anything that requires a key lock. I guess I could say the fine manipulation replaces the need for lockpicks, but even then you'd also need to add the lockpick skill to the spell with penalty skill levels for doing it blind IMO. And then you could still fail the roll unless you got the skill really high. Transform, it might take a couple phases but it will be done.

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear While I have run cities that restrict gear and magic and even had mages spellbound I never made it the norm. I never thought of it as odd to let powerful warriors armed to the teeth into town. Too many dangerous events can and do happen in towns for it to seem odd. To me it seemed more odd to restrict capable warriors who might take down the necromancer sending the zombies into the bar before the town guard arrives on the scene. It is sort of why adventurers get hired by the mayor in the first place, they can handle crap without you having to deplete the town guard of its trained men. When they come to town, its like you get there services for free. Sure they could start trouble as well, but given that there isn't a huge range of armed to the teeth men in town it would be suicidal so it isn't a huge worry. On top of that adventurers probably have more disposable income than anyone outside of rich merchants, as a mayor/lord etc I want them in town wasting money. Anything I do so they don't feel safe coming into town is costing my town and by extension me money.