arcady

Re: Is Daredevil 'Phys Disad: Blind' or just 'blind'?

On the 'is it my fault if the GM never uses iron' issue - this depends on what the GM knows at the outset.

If at the outset I presume there will be a lot of iron, but then later in play it turns out there is no iron, the player gets the points based on what I told them the game would be like.

That might sound a little wierd with a case like iron, so let me try it with a psych lim: fear of romance.

If I tell my players "there will be no romantic themes in this game" then that disad is worth nothing. But if I say "I use a lot of romantic subplots" then the disad is worth a lot, even if later on I never get around to introducing my planned romantic subplots.

The value of the disad is thus, in my opinion, fairly based on what will be in the game, but not on the player's ability to perfectly predict what will be in the game. Rather, on what expectations the GM gives the players about the game.

The debate on the blind disad is still interesting, albeit frustrating that there does not seem to be an actual community consensus.

In my own opinion, the frequency would still be always, even with a compensating different natured sense (like super human hearing or sonar) - you are still always not able to pick up visual only cues. The severity of how limiting this is to you however is something I am not clear on. You do have a total lack of that sense, but you are not totally sensory disabled. But then, even without a compensating sense you are not totally sensorilly disabled.

In both cases, you are totally lacking something that does a lot of what vision does, but in the super sense case you do have something else that does some of the major tasks you would use vision for.

Unclear for the final call for me still.

Re: Holidays

Are we contributing holidays gor your setting, or showing off the holidays we use in each of ours?

EDIT:

Re: Putting extra "oomph" into a spell

What I have on pushing and 'wilding' (a method that goes even further).

This might make the skill roll impossible, so mages can then force the spell - doubling the side effect for an automatic skill roll success:

Forcing a Spell:

If a spell fails a mage can choose to force it anyway. This must be declared -before- the Side Effect dice are rolled. Forcing a spell causes it to be cast despite the failed spell roll but doubles the Damage Class (active cost) of side effect. For a Wild Mage, the doubling explodes out of them as well - but cannot harm any mage directly opposing them or that mage's direct and clear subordinates (non subordinate allies however, are another matter).

If a character, such as Daredevil, has a physical disadvantage which is then mostly compensated for by some other ability do they still get the disad?

I'm thinking yes, but I can see counter arguments as well.

Phys: Blind is 25 points - all the time total imparement.

Getting a sense like Daredevil has would be

Detect - audio, targeting, 360 degrees, passive sense.

What he's lost is the ability to actually see, and thus does not get certain details.

Daredevil might be an extreme case from his sonar. Is there a difference if the compensating sense doesn't give color, shape, or perhaps non moving objects? Imagine someone who simply had hyper-hearing (passive targeting sense) to the point of being able to sense any motion, even an arrow or bullet (as most bullets are slower than sound), but could not sense something giving off no sound - such as a wall? Is this character still 'Phys: Blind' or just blind?

Re: Temporarily enchanting an item

Here's the method I use:

Re: Putting extra "oomph" into a spell

I have a couple schemes for pushing.

I allow for pushing using the Champions rules and not Hero setup - but side effects become more harsh under these circumstances.

I also allow a mage to then lower the effects of that by pushing the cost onto the world around them - causing even harsher effects to change the world in unknown ways.

Ritual magic in Fahla is structured to let mages boost each other, and create spells far beyond the normal limits of mortal mages, but the cost of doing such can be lethal.

In Fahla, you can always get more power, but the more you push into the world, the harder it burns on you. In the setting, 90% of all mages die in adolesence from an inability to deal with this.

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Gaming/magic_Hero.html

Re: hit location

I've used hit locations in all Hero games I've run since 1985 when I picked up my second Hero system game.

It puts a very strong control on the Stun Lottery, and is worth using if for no other reason than that.

Re: Sex as a skill

To Caris' and everyman-skills' points' date=' MOST of us get a LOT of "extra time" to make our skill rolls. I almost never make a decision at work in a phase if it's critical; normally I have at least 5 minutes and usually more. And often I make that with many people's consultation (i.e., complementary rolls).[/quote']This is why the system needs rules for a general default. All the extra time in the world won't help a roll of -no chance- becomes some chance, but it will help a -snowballs chance in hell- becomes a -good chance-.

 

If most tasks had a default of say -4+(STAT/5), then most people could not do those things, unless they had extra time and other modifiers.

 

Or rather than -4, some better number. I just pulled -4 out of thin air without having the extra time chart in front of me.

 

I would want a number that gave me the ability to perhaps do something given mundane time, but no ability to do it if I tried to do it in the time usually used for an 'in-game skill check'. Such as, give me an hour in the library and I can answer a question of research - such as a SS:Marine Biology check, but give me a minute to answer Dr. No about the sharks in his tank and I will usually fail (assuming 'I' was not a biologist - I am assuming the generic 'I' here). With time and aids we can pull together answers, but Hero has nothing to represent that -because- it lacks any default for this skill from which to add in the extra time modifier.

 

A smart GM ignores that fact, but the fact is still there in the structure of the skills system.

 

A default roll of <= -4 is still vastly better than one of 'nil' - 'nil' should only apply in such obscure forms of skill that cannot be done at all without proper training - the sort of thing that even time to think on it would not help.

Re: Do you want Indipendent Spell Creation?

I have a fairly tightly controlled systen as well. Players are left to design the actual spells their characters use, but the system is built with a very strict set of guidelines in order to recreate the style of magic used in my fiction.

Re: Sex as a skill

I still respectfully disagree. There are huge number of skills that most people have to a greater or lesser extent that Hero does not incorporate' date=' but the assumption is not that people do poorly at it.[/quote']Hero paints with an odd shaped brush in places, and the concept of Everyman skills is such an example.

 

It's an early generation concept for default skill ability, that the engine has not improved upon in the two decades (+/1 a year or two) since it first showed up (did it start in Espionage, DI, JI, or FH?).

 

At the time it was a revolutionary solution - that some things everybody has some level of ability in. It was quickly shown it's inadequateness by GURPS in 1985 which rightly gave a default to almost everything.

 

Nearly everything one can try to do one will have some chance of being able to do, and much of it under mundane circumstances one can do rather decently. GURPS had that idea, but was a little rough in the implimentation. Future games have continued to develop the concept, but Hero is still where it stood on this issue in 1983 - once revolutionary is now not quite enough.

 

If we stuck to the rules hard core, with no leniency, it would be very difficult in Hero to do some of the most mundane things, thanks to the lack of a mechanic for 'general defaulting.'

 

Most GMs however, won't make you make a PS:Cooking check just to make dinner on Thursday night - even though by the system they're giving you a free roll in saying so.

 

Almost every actual skill in the game also deserves an everyman roll at some level, adjustable by modifiers. There is always some remote chance with most of the entries in the skills chapter, and even with the ones that there seems to be no chance, most of them just have an even more remote chance - less than 3-, but still there and further possible if you can line up the right help.

 

For example, have Mary Jo make a webpage, and she will probably fail with her complete lack of programming skill - that ought to be perhaps a 1- skill roll. Give her Dreamweaver and she might make the now perhaps 9- roll.

 

Most GMs are dealing in assumptions that give her a skill roll at times, and not at other times, but the rules backing that assumption are not clear or standardized. In casual circumctances it really doesn't matter, but in a stress situation where it does matter, the system only allows for untrained (0% chance), or 8- or more. There's no schema for general defaulting in between there, and nothing to reflect that if Mary Jo had a 25 Int she'd likely figure it out. but if she had an 8 Int she probably wouldn't.

 

In game, when you hit this situation, you tend to have to just hand wave an answer and game on while ignoring the weakpoint in the gaming engine - a weak point because it has no answer to the question, not because it has an answer I don't like (which would make my point a very different issue).

Re: Sex as a skill

Rubbish. It makes my INT and PRE go up' date=' I'm sure it does. You also need something like 'keen to introduce you to a friend when empty (another bottle of beer)'[/quote']Alcohol may give you a temporary psych lim thinking your stats have gone up, but it has actually drained them.

 

It should drain con as well, and perhaps do a 1 pip killing attack, and a 1/2d6 body drain. It takes surprisingly little to make it lethal, but most of the damage will recover fairly quickly. If you wanted to be really realistic you could add on a 1pip transform, which when it finally gets enough body to transform causes a permanent loss of 1 to con, com, body (random pick) - beer belly or liver damage. Drink frequently enough and you will get these transforms faster than the body can heal to avoid them. Make transforming back require some period of non drinking, or simply the spending of character points.

 

That's gets over detailed though...

Re: Sex as a skill

My understanding (harking back to the start of the post) is that we are making suggestions for some sort of alien race with practically supernatural sexual powers.

If all you want is a species that gives good sex, use skill levels. The special effect doesn't determine what you use to model it. Skill levels is just the game effect.

If you want them to be able to do abnormal things to people during sex, or use the energy of sex to power unusual other abilities, then go beyond skill levels.

Re: Sex as a skill

Pre (Charisma' date=' Force of Personality) is most useful for getting your target where you want them (Seduction, charming). Actual performance in bed is based on many different things, physical skill among them. Personality plays a part, so does knowledge and experience, your mood and your partners and many other variables. Simmering it down to one thing is over simplifying.[/quote']Charisma isn't just getting them there, but also performing while there. It's not physical - sex is all about emotion. And that's not at all a simplification, it just happens that in Hero (and nearly every RPG) charisma is only one stat because it has so few combat uses [Hero's presense attack rules are unusual in the field], even though it should cover three or more very different kinds of social interaction - for example the ability to charm and the ability to intimidate are not well connected.

 

It's all about how you work it, how you charm them while in the act as well as both before and after.

 

Actual physical ability plays no more role in sex than it does in reading from a book. Perhaps a little more, but not by much. It can influence confidence and thus impair ability to charm, but that's more like giving a skill check penalty to a person who finds themself physical lacking - such as being disabled and underconfident because of it (whereas a confident disabled person would frankly not face the same penalty - they would only have a penalty on the initial persuasion skill check based on the opinions of the target).

Re: Sex as a skill

Limit it to PRE based skills only.

Sexual ability has nothing to do with physical prowess and everything to do with charm. The abilities of a politican, a Don Juan / Mati Hari, a prostitute, a con man, and a gambler are essentially the same used in different circumstances.

For that reason I would suggest PS.

Acrobatic ability only helps in the fantasies of teenaged boys who don't understand what its all really about.

My setting uses tantric magic, so I have this as a magic skill based on PRE. In real world occult this is one of the major angles through which magic is worked. Tantric magic allows you to blend and combine energies, as well as heighten the power and thus impact of your work by digging into core human emotions and energies.

Re: Social "Combat' and "Duels"

You can work it out with presence attacks affected by skill checks.

Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla - PC Disadvantages

I'm posting it as an external file, so that as I update it when they change them I don't need to edit this.

I gave players three sessions to get me a finished character, so they have one more session. I then am lenient on edits until I feel the game has 'found its mood' and the players know their characters.

So these are not all that final

Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla - session two

Session Two

In which, halfway through, I remembered that Damage Resistance was not a -bonus to- Defense but merely a conversion of defense to make it resistant, and thus the Skeletons only had a 2 PD against bashing attacks and 4 against slashing, and not 6 bashing, 8 slashing...

Unamed PC has become Spaghet of clan Ios... and taken a reputation for being odd in referring to himself by the nickname of Spaghettios... Oh well, this is the guy who in my supers game insisted on N-Ray vision blocked by cotton. You can't win them all, and he is the most 'devoted to hero system' player in the group, despite only only fourth edition. That came as a surprise to me, as I had previously thought he'd told me he'd only played homemade RPGs before joining our MnM game. With the player of Simona due to leave the country in January, Spaghet will be the only mage, and I need mages to make this work... The other players were all afraid of building mages when they learned all spells need a skill roll and side effects for failure (and in tonight's session, rough points in my magic system showed this concern had some validity).

The game picked up where it left off. The team had just dispatched an amazingly tough two skeletons - human and dog. It was time to move on.

Exploration of the chamber found three mother goddess statues. Two embedded in upside fountains, and one coming out of the cieling that was once the floor. Both Marko and Sesto were of the opinion that these statues may or may not be a heresy. There is some conflict in the church over this issue - are these pre cataclysmic references to Fahla, the mother goddess, backing the church teaching that modern Domyaria was founded by those who survived the Cataclysm for being faithful, or are they something else, due to the slight anthropomorphic differences? Staeglio suspects he could fetch a high price for them on the antiquities market, but also possibly expose himself to the Inquisition.

Going down another ladder, they find themselves on a level with three chambers. A pattern is beginning to emerge as two of the chambers of this level are on top of two from the last level. From this point on the entire complex follows that pattern - two chambers linked by an enclosed walkway - making an inverted pair of towers. The first chamber has more fountains, matching the chamber above it. Carved into these fountains are sexually explicit representations of pre cataclysmic gods - though perhaps they represent early understandings of Lustrala or Maestalhn.

In the second chamber of this level winged skeletons came to life and attacked the group. Midway through this fight was when I had the sense to think I ought to look up Damage Resistance and see if it was one of those powers I'd almost never used in the old editions of Hero, because these skeletons seemed awefully tough. On confirmation I looked at the hits scored thus far and ruled one skeleton down, one half down, and one uninjured. Before that I had only recorded two body taken by one of them - so it was a big difference. The characters supposed the skeletons to be the remains of birdmen, a rare race of people that the players are probably largely unaware of because mention of them is only left to a few places in the setting website. They live on floating pieces of land that roam the skies of Fahla.

These heretical abominations were thus dispatched to the afterlife, and the team searched a series of crates and sacks on the far wall. The room was a pantry, and the crates were full of Quinoa, food supplies, and even wine.

Simona began to wonder about the state of just where they were, noticing the air unusually dry for being below the water table and adjacent to a canal outside. In fact, it was as if this building were in a desert. She cast a spell to find all sources of water, and found her senses blocked at the cieling that was now a floor, and not extending to beyond the building on any side. Furthermore, the fountains they had passed showed water in the pipes - as if the building had only been flipped two hours ago and let to drain out despite the dry floors. Not only that, but the wine in the crates was pefectly good, despite this room likely having been here like this for at least the past three thousand years.

on to the third chamber, which rested under the second chamber of the previous level. Here they found something blocking further passage. Simona and Spaghet immediately saw the cause - the cieling trap door had a swirling mass of solid Air 1/8th of an inch (real not Hero) above it. Mage Sight told them this extended throughout the entire floor just under the plaster. That was confirmed when Staeglio took out a chisel and dug into the plaster. After a minute or so he found himself scraping plaster that made no sound and did not scrape away (he was unable to tell that he was scratching just a fraction of nothing away from the actual plaster - at seemingly empty air).

How to dispell this? Spaghet was quite convinced that he was looking not just at elemental Air, but a primordial connection to Air - as if this was a leak point for the plane of air mages theorized to exist. It's power was beyond comprehension. The team considered giving up, going back and filing a report with their superiors. One player even wanted to go an 'get the big guns' - bring in other NPCs to deal with it. Perhaps remembering my many complaints to the group over what I feel led to the near destruction of my MnM game in calling that games verions of the JLA -every freaking session- the others resisted the idea.

Finally Marko started backtracking, and suggested there may be a link between this barrier and the swirling mass of Air on the first level. He made his way down there and when the rest of the team did not stop him this time he stood in the exact center of that room. Everyone heard a sudden boom - like the sound a Taiko drum, followed by the sound of two beats on a hollow wooden drum. The Air effect was gone, and they could see the unseeable spot above them now as nothing but floor.

Sure enough, some levels down at the trapdoor, the effect was gone there as well. However, several of the team began to notice any wood or cloth they had collected had begun to rot. The wood began to look as if untreated wood from a tree left out for a year, and the effect was spreading. The place was no longer frozen in time.

Moving down caused quite a stir. Looking down the open trap door they saw more of the same - an empty room with no decorations. Sesto was first to go, and as soon as he was halfway in there he disapeared from view. The others called to him, and he responded that everything seemed safe, but he was asked to come up and make a report of what he saw.

What he saw was a world flipped back again. As soon as he had crossed that point he was suddenly moving -UP- a ladder and not down, coming to end of a ladder exit much like you have on a swimming pool. He saw a room with opulant furnishings, two doors, and several windows. Out the windows he saw open sky with objects moving rapidly across, and more towers in the distance as if in a city of towers.

Eventually all the group save Staeglio made their way down to what was up. They found that one door matched the tower pattern of before, and one led to an outdoor staircase which itself led down to a canal and a boat moored there. That outside door was blocked by another Air effect, and nobody ever considered trying to leap out a window. The building thus appeared to have its entraance on the second floor, perhaps to deal with frequent flooding of the canals - a problem common to the modern city the characters live in (Coinic). The objects moving in the skyline appeared to be people on flying carpets or flying by other means, and at least three dragons. Nothing Marko had ever studied ever hinted at dragons ever having been so common, so this was something of a shock.

The rooms in the two chambers were full of stuffed silk pillows and in the second chamber they found a spiral staircase going up, with the steps molded in gold. Benito threw some pillows down to Staeglio, who still refused to join the group.

While Staeglio removed the suddenly rotting goose feathers from his new silk pillows the other continued up to find themselves in a kitchen with food cooking on a stove - bread, quinoa, and soup. A young attractive maid greeted them in the ancient tongue, and Marko worked to translate her invation to join the master, who had been expecting them, for lunch.

She escorted the group up and led them over to a dining chamber. Looks outside the windows confirmed the building followed a two linked towers pattern, with each tower holding either a 30x30 foot chamber or a 20x30 foot chamber. The stairwell was on the outside of the 30x30 chamber, and the last ladder had been into the room with the doors on the 20x30 side. Before that the ladders had alternated sides.

In the dining chamber they found a middle aged man who matched the tapestries they had seen earlier and two young women with a family resemblance sitting to his sides around a large table. They were invited to sit, and as soon as the last of them a wind blew through the room from the entrance towards the man. As the wind passed light faded, day went to night, the room flipped, and the maid, daughters, and man all became ghosts sitting on what was now the cieling around where the table would have been had it not been on the floor that once was the cieling smashed in pieces from a fall. Windows outside showed moonlight. The ghosts continued mouthing in silence as if speaking to guests sitting with them, but Simona sense a growing sense of awareness of the living in them. In time, they would realize the team was there.

The team chose to backtrack, going two levels down to Staeglio to make a report. Interestingly, while the ghost level was now flipped, the kitchen and cushion level were still right side up, and the level with Staeglio was still flipped. In mid coversation Simona and Spaghet were hit with a powerful sense of Earth magic being used below them, on the kitchen level, as if someone had cast a spell, perhaps teleporting in.

A short bit of debate later, all but Staeglio moved down/up into the depths/heights of the tower. In the hallway between dining room and foyer of the level with the ghosts they found the ghost of the maid pinned to a corner of the floor that was now cieling by a molten rock. She had been 'flattened' there, as if now paper, but returning to three dimensions on her edges. She was beyond the mortal world though, her essense fading so that her soul could finally be reborn. In the dining room itself they found the father and one daughter crouching in corners, and another daughter ghost pinned in the same manner as the maid. Further, they heard a group of footfalls below them (as they were standing on the ceiling) in the next level up in the tower).

The ghosts were fully hostile and aware now, and attacked. I learned that ghosts in Hero are mostly stun hurting only creatures, unless they use their TK. Only the mages could hurt them, and both mages suffered failed skill rolls a couple of times. Simona knocked herself out when she ran out of Endurance and took a stun drop that allowed the father ghost to drain her. This was after a critical spell failure had done 2 Body to her. She healed the body, reminding me that in a note somewhere I had banned healing the damage from spell failure, but I was not sure where that note was and was not about to spring it on the players in mid fight. Rather I plan to think it over and see if I shall keep it or not. Spaghet managed to drain out most of his Endurance in two spell failures, but still managed to dispatch the last of the ghosts.

With that we ended the session after I told them they heard a team of people rooting through something below to above of them.

I need to find a way to get Staeglio to join the team. He has a moderate psych limitation of fear of magic and mages. I will post again in a moment with the group's "disads so far" to get comments on them and how I can liven up the game with them. I've told his player he needs to up the frequency of the magic fearing disad, as magic will play a larger role in the game that I at first thought it would. At first we thought we'd have a group with no mages and I was going to make a format with adventures that avoided much magic.

Re: Racial Disadvantages

I left them counting against the total, but not against the total for specific categories.

Re: Building a custom enhanced sense - What do I need to build this effect?

Well this is what I've worked out so far:

http://home.pacbell.net/arcady0/fahla/Gaming/magic_Hero.html#magesight

Mage Sight:

All Mages have the ability to sense other mages casting or holding magical elements. This works as the Detect Sense for Magic, and possibly a distinctive feature on mages.

Mage sight is contained within the primary element's VPP. It can do the following, depending on the size of the VPP:

• Detect Magic (Class, 5 points), Passive; Real Cost 5. Can determine element.
  
• Add sense (2 pts.); Real Cost now 7.
  
• Add Range; Real Cost now 10.
  
• Add Discriminatory; Real Cost now 15. Can relative power in relation to self, rough time of fading magic - recent or not.
  
• Add 360 degrees; Real Cost now 20. Can sense around corners, but not through silk, magical barriers, or more than 5 inches (actual, not Hero system hexes) of matter.
  
• Add Analyze; Real Cost now 25. Can tell exact magic style, exact power, ID caster on future contact.

Mage Sight cannot have other Sense modifiers. A mage's Mage Sight suffers the same Real Cost limits as any spell they might cast, and drops down when they use up parts of their pool to whatever is left. So a Mage who could cast a real cost spell of 20 has 360 degrees, when that mage casts a Real Cost spell of 11, they only have 9 left for Mage Sight, and thus have the 7 point version.

Re: Building a custom enhanced sense - What do I need to build this effect?

Keith: 350 degrees?

I noticed you wrap it into your multipower. I had it seperate from the VPP I require the mages to take, and if I folded it in they'd have 20 or more additional points.

I've been wondering if as I described it out of my fiction above (rough draft of that chapter - and below my norm, been bugging me since I posted it) I would even need the 360 degree aspect...

Re: Building a custom enhanced sense - What do I need to build this effect?

Thanks folks.

Only, two conflicting responses, who's right?

Oh, if I wanted it to be able to go around corners, or even all the way around a block, but not through things, would that be getting indirect instead of 360 degrees, or?

I want to build the sense that I've described here:

Something' date=' or someone, just at the range of Mage Sight, was always there. She guessed a block or two, where they likely thought she could not see them behind walls and around corners - underestimating her power. Whoever it was would follow her, just on the edge, as she went for her morning and midday meals - everyday the moment she stepped beyond the door of her estate there it was, a presence - sometimes Water, other times Fire, and once even Air.[/quote']

 

Given that the special effect entails sensing the use of magic and its general nature and strength - not in exact terms, but in relation to oneself.

 

How could I construct this sense?

 

If it entails an N-Ray ability, how do you add that part in? N-Ray doesn't seem to have any special cost on it for the ability to penetrate objects (unless I missed it).

Re: Things I'd like to see more of in fantasy gaming

I run games where everything is part of a living environment, and while I have characters retire as lords and ladies all the time, everything is part of an ecosystem and the PCs know it. In an ecosystem, nobody stays on top of the food chain for very long if they can't hold their place with strength or guile.

 

Unless you plan to raise an army to fight the emperor, you will bow to the position, if not the person.

Kill an emporer, and for the rest of you life both the nobles and commoners will be out to get you for regecide. You have to spend generations convincing them that the peerage system is a morally bankcrupt concept before you can get past that for more than a short while.

And then you'll just have to fend off invasions of rivals who fear the spread of your ideas.

If you don't believe me, try bringing up the fact the guy suing you for hitting his dog with your car is a known drug dealer and see how the court reacts?

 

They don't care, he's not on trial, YOU are.

However, that fact actually backs your case. A commoner has no credibility compared to a noble. If the setting has divine right of kings - even before the gods a high priest would be below a monarch.

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!!

My Arcane Adversaries review is now live on rpg.net:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10820.phtml

Re: Campaign: Lomyrian Relic Hunters in Fahla

They've asked some of those questions, but not all of them. They've not yet found answers for any of them.

Half of last session was spent in wrapping up character generation, one player not yet having a name for his PC is not all that bad given that.