arcady

Re: FH Prefabs: Armor,Weapons,Gear etc. FHweapons2 is mostly missing: reduced END 0 Real Weapon OAF on its weapons. What constitutes FHweapon1? Or is the 2 just a version number?

Re: Commonmagics A 15 point VPP is pretty powerful. Giving everyone that would nullify the need for things like weapons and tools. You might want to cut it to 5 points or less.

Re: Turakian Age: Drakine Population Dynamics You have them because in the womb everyone is originally female. The male gender change happens as the result of a hormone imbalance. As an adult, I could give you the counter hormone and your breasts would develop and become functionally viable - though enabling lactation would require whatever hormones are present in the body as a result of pregnancy. Human breasts are there for a reason, and it has nothing to do with Hugh Heffner. It's a food organ, and if the people who develop them to fullness never live to use them, you have to wonder why they have them. Does a setting need logic? Yes - where the magic isn't there interrupting that logic it does. When the magic does interrupt, the effects should make sense to the nature of the magic. I don't recall for the appendix, I think it's vestigal to an earlier stage. Tonsils do a function which if I recall is corrected to disease fighting or something.

Re: FH Prefabs: Armor,Weapons,Gear etc. I bought Hero Designer today, and I was very surprised when I bought and downloaded the Fantasy Hero pack that it did not also have this. Thanks for putting it together. Now I have to figure out how Hero Designer works... It's a bit confusing.

My magic system needs two VPPs, one I use for trained mages and the other for wild mages. If given the choice between the two, which would appeal to you more: assuming something like 'The Gift' in Fantasy Hero (page 265)... In one system for every point you pay you get 3 points for the pool, and skill checks are at -1 per 10 active points in the spell. In the other system for every point you pay you get 5 points for the pool, and skill checks are at -1 per 5 active points in the spell. The general rules on both these VPPs: You must buy it for your element of magic: Earth, Air, Fire, or Water and that governs what spirits you call upon and how your magic shapes - not just physical elements. All spells cost at least full END - you can also get increased END, but no reduced END. All spells have the side effects limitation. Control skills are as per style of magic and you can have several of them - each dictates a way you work magic and you can choose with each spell cast what skill to use by situation. Examples: ritual, tantric, battle, skirmish, performance, social, alchemy, charms, etc... The Wild mages have a more severe side effect (not sure by how much yet), and cannot cast the exact same spell more than twice a day. It has to be at least slightly different each time. The trained mages have a list of known spells, though they can add to it by simply making a control skill roll when observing somebody else casting a spell. A new spell is at a -2 skill roll however. The 'major side' effect I envision: failure: lose 1d6 END per 10 points in spell (1/2 active points EB) fumble: (failed by 5-9, or rolled 18) take 1/2 active points as normal damage EB. massive fumble: (failed by 10 or more) 1/2 active points as a killing attack. The failed by 10+ would only happen if your roll was 8- or worse, as an 18 only triggers the critical failure. Perhaps Wild Mages would have all the above with the explosion advantage - hurting them and bursting out of them as well (so an extreme side effect rather than major as per the trained mages). Of the VPPs, which is more potent. How would you shift their numbers so they are about equal. Once I have them about equal but still different I plan to assign one to wild mages and one to trained mages.

Re: Building Ritual Magic Systems It just occurred to me that one simple way of doing this would be to have all the helping mages use their VPPs to do an AID on the VPP and spell of the main caster. I'd apply the standard effect rule from page 72 in the 5E book of 3 per die on that, to make it flow faster - and I guess they'd have to split the AID evenly between the pool and the spell resulting in 1.5 points per die to each if I'm reading pages 74 to 75 of the 5E book correctly.

Re: Code VS Killing Poll I've been trying for the last year in my MnM game to get my players to be the 'Hellions' to Freedom City's New Mutants (Claremon Academy) but they insist on trying to be goodie goodies. So I've countered by making the other team 'more heroic' by being more 'law and order' - the other team captures and convicts without trial, making snap judgements about people with a simplistic morality. The PCs on the other hand, are being treated to a world where I keep unvieling sympathetic motivations in my villains, just before the other team tries to rush in with the noose. You can try for one setup, and not quite get it. My personal preference is for more complex morality where it is never clear cut, never so easy as 'those guys have the black hats on.' I try to remove the presence of clearly definable good or evil, and make it something people have to judge very situationally. The people in my setting who do believe in absolute heroism are the ones I make into the 'real bad guys'. I do strongly feel that you should not give points for a psych disad unless that disad 'goes against type' for the game. If you run a 'comics code authority' mood game, nobody should get points for a code against killling, but if one Hero has a problem with using lethal violence - that hero should get disad points.

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! It took forever, but my Star Hero review finally did go live this morning over at rpg.net: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10547.phtml I'm working on reviews for a few other books as well right now. Hopefully have those out shortly -somewhere-.

Re: Caffeine Addiction If it doesn't somehow 'get in the way of play' you have to wonder if it should even be worth five points. I know there are people for whom a caffeine addiction is severe enough, but I've not seen nor met them so I'm not sure how I would run or play them. Keep that in mind though.

Maybe I missed it, or maybe it's not there... But in Hero, how do you assist another person in making a skill check. Say two people are researching a subject, and I have a skill check come into play over it, or perhaps two climbers and one attempts to help the other find a better hold on the cliffside, or even dancing partners helping each other out... I'm coming off of d20, where if you make a DC 10 skill check you can give another person a plus 2 on their skill check. I thought an idea like this was present in Hero, but I'm not finding it in the books.

Re: Recreational Drugs Most drugs are going to make you -think- you've been enhanced, but not actually do any enhancing. The only stats that might face actual enhancing are the ability to resist being stunned and a boosted Ego/pre for overcoming your disads and boosting ability to resist certain (but not) all mental effects. The stun stat itself might go up, but also with the caveat that about 3/4th of the entire total (including pre boosted total) might get put under an activation roll or some other mechanic where it might suddenly fail you... When I referrenced damage for alcohol, I wasn't talking psychology so much as bioilogy - it eats you alive and is both very fast and very harsh about it. The line between pleasantly drunk and dying is very thin for a lot of people. Alcohol is the number one factor present in violence and accidental death and injury though, and is highly addictive. Few recreational drugs have real physical benifits. Though Hero system makes stun a physical stat and it's really more about psychological shock - so in that case in Hero there would be the above mentioned possible physical effects - you can resist shock bettern with many drugs, but also at the gamble of going into sudden shock. Addiction will almost always also carry with it the problem of losing the ability to produce endorphins (sp?) - lessoning the ability to feel good or feel pleasure without the drug present. You could wrap that into a physical disad, or include it as an aspect of addiction. Eventually it will create a whole host of psych disads that come from the inability to feel good most of the time unless one is high, drunk, or whatever.

Fantasy Hero lists a Ritual limitation, but that's really just a needs multiple people limiter. How would you construct a -magic system- where the more mages you added to a spell's casting, the more powerful it would get. One lone mage casting would be 'X', two working together might be able to pull in 1.5x, and a coven of thirteen perhaps as much as 3x, 10x, or 13x. If I wanted something like say: 1 = x 2 = 1.2x 3 = 1.5x 5 = 2x 8 = 2.5x 13 = 3x where x is dice of effect. How would I structure the ability to add together your power? Use some variation of pushing and sharing the END cost? Or use...? What about methods where x was related to the skill roll (aiding others in the skill check) as well or instead.

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Probably a mixed bag. If you're someone like one of the staff reviewers for Enworld you get over 90% of what comes out for d20 free - and you simply cannot read it all and are likley to not like most of what you read. After a while, you'll burn out. If one company that you like is giving you free product to review it, it does risk sounding of bias. That's what Sidhain was warning of earlier. If these reviews read with too much fandom in them, no one will take them seriously. When writing a review, you need to make sure you're detailed and honest with -both- the shortcomings and strengths of the product. If you can do that without with being openly harsh and crass or overly patronizing and worshipful you will stand a chance of not only bringing the product to the attention of the people who want something like it, you might also manage to improve the next book Hero releases. People dismiss 'fanboys' as much as they dismiss 'slammers'. Look at amazon.com, where you can rate the reviews, and note what kinds of reviews people say were useful to them. You can be a fan, get a complimentary book, and still do an honest positive review that is taken seriously. But you will have a harder job of convincing an outsider - and it does start with being honest about how you got the book.

Re: Does this look like a complete profile? Try using it once. Put one of the unique species of your setting into it, and see how it looks. From there adjust to taste, and show us the entry so we can see what we're missing if anything.

Re: Recreational Drugs It might have been in one of the two Almanaca... I would do it by putting a combination of Drains and Aids on the stats, and some Mind Controls. Psychadelics might also have Illusions. Some of it should have some kind of side effect with an activation roll to represent risk of an overdose. Also much of it would have a cumulative transformation to slowly give a person an addiction. Even modern Marijuana has this, as it's been bred to be a very different plant than it used to be, and seems to get more an more dangerous every year -in certain strains. The most damaging drug known is alcohol though, so whatever you do with the recreational drugs, most over the counter beverages should have worse game effects - including for the risk of addiction. Only a few drugs are more addictive, but none are more damaging unless they are classed as poisons and not recreational at all.

Re: Using d20 instead of 3d6 (DON'T KILL ME!)

Re: Using d20 instead of 3d6 (DON'T KILL ME!) The bell curve nature of Hero makes it a lot less -random- of a system than d20. On a d20, a roll of 1 is just as likely as a 14 or a 20. The values of your skills thus take a lot longer to have a degree of meaningfull impact. +2 in d20 is similar to an 8- in Hero. An 11- in Hero is about the equivalent of +9 in d20. I'm working that off of the average d20 DC being 15 or 20 - essentially 17.5. Without a curve, most of the time the die roll will be the deciding factor, not your aptitude with the task. DnD players have to work to line up circumstance more (get modifiers) or even eliminate the roll (take 10 or 20). Hero players have more control over their ability - and their character will herself play the decisive role in the roll. You can change to a d20, but it will completely alter the nature of the game and you should consider the implications carefully and be sure you like them first.

I put up a review of Star Hero here: http://www.enworld.org/reviews/index.php?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=arcady&product=SH It should go live on rpg.net as well in a 'however long it takes'.

Re: Begginner Question You gave your humans 20 points back for Normal Characteristic Maxima - is that how it's done in 5E, that Heroic characters get points for it?

Re: XP....how much per session....? How long do you expect the game to go for? Will it's plot run their course in a year, or will you likely tire of it by then and decide to move on to something else? Once you have your likely end date, think about how powerful you want them to be by then, and take the difference between that and now plus about 20% and divide it up by the number of sessions you expect to have if schedules don't face too many bumps. That gives you an average to work with. For me for example, I'd say my average game is likely to last a year to a year and a half before I can't stand running the same thing every game night anymore. Call that fifteen months, biweekly, for thirty sessions. If Fantasy Hero, I'd like to see them reach maybe 210 or so by then - 60 points. So I take 72/30 for 2.4 a night. So I should make it easy to get 2 points, and cause it to hit 3 about half the time. I'm making a guess that after about 210 points, Fantasy Hero will start to break down and look more like Champions, but experience with running it will tell me if that's true or not.

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Ok, my STAR HERO review is now live here: http://www.enworld.org/reviews/index.php?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=arcady&product=SH

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Other than rpg.net and enworld.org, anyone know of good places to post or read reviews?

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! I'm guessing that once my review goes live on rpg.net, it will be here: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10547.phtml But that's a guess. I've got plans to write some more reviews as well. Over at EnWorld, I've submitted product info for Star Hero, Fantasy Hero Grimoire one and two, Monsters Minions and Marauders, and Turakian Age.

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Well I just finished writing a 3,936 word review of Star Hero... As soon as it goes live, I'll send up a URL.

Re: Comeliness? Sexual preference shouldn't matter. Human beings treat people who are attractive better than those who aren't - even when sexual tension is absent and even beyond first impressions and even with people we've known for most of our lives. It has a -major- impact on human relations. Also, the Seduction skill has nothing to do with sex, but with winning people over to liking you. I'm replying to an old post, and since that time in another thread I posted the qoutation from the Hero system book on what Secdution does: page 48: "...gain other's trust (and perhaps even friendship) by offering companionship or favors. A successful Seduction roll usually makes it easier to learn information or gain favors..." (page 48 Hero rulebook) Comliness should be used in nearly every human interaction. If nothing else, use it to set initial status of the reaction - but also realize that with very attractive people we have to have it proved to us that they are bad, and often have to have it proved again and again in each encounter before it sinks in. By contrast, with ugly people we have to have it proved they are not bad, and again and again with each encounter until it sinks in... Like or not, when you observe people 'en mass', they are making such 'shallow' judgements. But then, these judgements are not as shallow as we want to believe they are - in nature the aspects that determine attractiveness are linked to health, survivability, and reproductive virility for both genders. Of course in the era of botox and lipo - the package no longer hints at the contents.