Captain Obvious

Wow! What a thought! I suppose the easiest way to handle this would be to say that there are sentient humanoid animals and regular animals. The regular animals have the same rights that real world regular animals have....

Yeah, Epic of Aerth is a really good setting...there's just so much support for it to be found! That's what first drew me into the Dangerous Journeys thing. There was enough interesting stuff hinted at in Epic that I decided I had to get my hands on Mythus, and once I got that, I decided I had to get Mythus Magick. There's some interesting stuff in there, but it seems like it would be really clunky to play. Better just to convert the good stuff to Hero....

The final outcome you want here is for the target to be embarrassed by a noise coming from his body. When I converted it, I just built it as Images, and went with the fact that it was an actual noise and not an illusion as a special effect. Given the narrow range of situations where such a spell would be useful, it's not out of keeping with the spirit of the game to keep the price for it low. Those mid-level witch spells in Dangerous Journeys are the real killers. The storm spells and stuff? Ah, hell, I converted them in such a way to keep the same effects, and some of those things came out to 500 AP, and 90 or so real cost....

Whisperdeath-class kite Size: 13 (65) STR: 75 DEX: 11 (3) BODY: 23 DEF: 10 (does not protect some occupants -1/4, 19 points) SPD: 3 (9) Movement: 20" Flight, x8 NCM (OAF sails (-1 1/4), sailed (-1/4), no backwards movement (-1/4), limited maneuverability (-1/4), RSR: Trimsman, no AP penalty (-0), 17 points) -6" Running (-12) -2" Swimming (-2) Enormous Anchor (30) Heavy Gun (I'll post all this crap later...ditto for the Rod Gun, 33 points) +3 Heavy Guns (10) Rod Gun (33 points) Total cost: 205 Does anyone else have anything to post, or am I the undisputed KING OF MARS?

I've mentioned before on the boards that you could keep the huckster's poker hand in Hero if you defined it as an Activation roll. With 5 cards, you get one pair or better about 50% of the time, so pretty much all spells get an 11- activation. You can build spells in increments with each increment having a higher hand (or activation roll), so that a spell that gets 6d6N damage on one pair gets 8d6 on two pair, and 10d6 on three of a kind. Of course, once you get higher up in the rankings, you kind of have to make up your own limitation levels for the activation rolls, since Hero system doesn't really support the miniscule chances of a straight flush.... Here's a thread where I worked up Soul Blast in Hero terms: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2980

That's why I don't use the software to build stuff. I like my twisted logic.

Maybe it's "for entertainment purposes only"....

I've done some minor farting around with converting Space: 1889 to Hero. Some racial package deals, weapons stats, a few of the beasts (but this was before I got the 5th Ed Bestiary, so they could probably be done better). I started in on converting the some of the airships, but ran into sort of a snag when the Martians didn't have the strength to get their screw galleys moving. I've thought about looking up those notes and posting them here, just to get something in the "other genres" board that wasn't anime, but I've just been lazy....

I didn't realize that there was a Battlestar Galactica miniseries... Are they showing it again anytime soon?

The next campaign I run, I'll be getting back to original sources. Dwarves will have a Susceptibility to sunlight, elves will have a Vulnerability/Susceptibility to iron, etc. Different enough that they'll lose a lot of that D&D feel, not so different that players will look at them and ask WTF. I also plan on throwing in some native American creatures, for those that just can't tolerate elves and dwarves any more.

Humans are primates, and seem to have no particular problems with people owning monkeys as pets.

I see that this question has already been pretty adequately answered, but for future reference on similar questions, a good book to have is Frontier Living by Edwin Tunis. It's about the American frontier, but the technology levels involved there weren't much more advanced than typical fantasy levels until about 150 years ago. For the record, Vanguard's link shows exactly the sort of sawmill that was in use around 1800, according to Tunis.

There's an awful lot of confusion about armor weights here. It sounds to me like some other game company is trying to bring Hero down. Fnord.

Looks like your questions have been answered already. All I have to say is, Don't throw any of your old RPG books away. Take what's good from them and convert to Hero.

Crap. I was hoping to see some cool new campaigns or magic systems or what have you, and here this thread has devolved into a slam-fest, with excellent authors being slammed mercilessly by both sides. Any chance this thread will go back on track?

I want an Oompa-loompa!

The templates are nice, too. I don't recall if 4th Edition had them or not (I don't think so). Basically they are little add-ons that can differentiate one type of creature from another, like the Ferocious template, which increases the animal's PRE and STR, or the Divine template, which gives improved senses, immortality, improved defenses, and an aura that damages demons. The templates alone are worth an upgrade, assuming you aren't living hand-to-mouth right now....

That's pretty much a GM call. I generally go with the idea that to buy an upgraded spell costs the difference between the lower power spell and the upgrade. Occasionally, though, I'll use a magic system where the upgraded spell is totally different, and has to be bought at its full cost. I usually only use this in a world with really low magic levels....

A guy with a sword could destroy the planet with that construction if you want to get right down to it. I don't know if there is a right way to build a planet-buster without GM fiat entering in in some way. Maybe the Real Weapon limitation...

Killer Shrike, remind me to buy you and Wily Quixote drinks if we ever meet. This capsule description sounds like most every WoD player I've had to misfortune to try to game with. You guys did well in spanking their overblown yet fragile egos.

Superman doesn't get really mad. His Psych Lim: Goody Two-shoes doesn't allow it.

Reading the weekly update about all the research Steve puts into each vehicle write-up reminds me of something else I'd like to see: How these stats were derived. Undoubtedly, some of us will drag up some bizarre real-world vehicles to use in one campaign or another, and these will never ever show up in any official capacity, because they're so off-the-wall. Having some sort of official guidelines for how real-world stats translate into game stats would help to keep home-brewed vehicles in line with the rest of the game.

The old Super-Agents supplement had a campaign idea similar to this: The Near Space Defense agency. They operated on their own (no sponsoring government) and flew super-jets augmented with recovered alien technology. Their purpose was to keep Earth safe from the mysterious aliens, whose purpose here was unknown. There are probably a few ideas you can rip off from there if you can track down a copy....

Looks like a lot of good ideas have already been posted. One of these days I'm going to camp out waiting for Steve to post one of these "what do you want" threads so I can get credit for the good ideas and not just be the guy showing support for them.... As the guy showing support for good ideas, I say no reprints (cross-referencing is great though), and go generic for most writeups and give us packages to modify for specific models. I like the detail in TUV, but each write up took up the better part of the page, especially for modern military vehicles. Too much to get much variety into a workable page count. On the other hand, a generic WWII battleship with specific packages could take up two pages and cover damn near every battleship in the war....

I'm really tired, and should be in bed now, so forgive me for not crunching all the numbers here for you. The best way, IMO, to do this is to buy a large Healing power with Area Effect, Gradual Effect, and Incantations Throughout. This way, you get some healing soon after you start, and a little more a little later, etc, but as soon as the chanting stops, the spell ends, even if all the dice weren't rolled. For instance, if you have an 8d6 Healing that takes 20 minutes for full effect, you in essence have 2d6 every 5 minutes four times. Is this coherent? I really need to get to bed.