Whiplash

There are also physical limits to how strong and fast, tough and smart a character can be. In the real world, for example, I doubt that it is physically possible for a character to be stronger than the STR 25-30 range. If you buy my previous post about a max cap on skills, that places a max point cost on human characters, disregarding supernatural powers, contacts, perks, etc. But even there, there are only so many people you can know. W.

long-lived uber elves If "immortal" creatures really lived, they would be very skilled but not infinitely so. I think there is a theoretical maximum to the skills a character can have, any character, no matter how smart. The problem comes with modeling them in a game (like Hero and every other one I've seen). The skill system just can't handle it. In real life, if you get to be really good at something, it takes a long time to get that way, but it takes a long time to stay that way. The more finely honed you have a skill, the more time it takes to keep it so finely honed, else it loses its edge and slowly fades with neglect. There are only 24 hours in the day. Eventually, you'll know so much that you can't keep it all up. As you learn new things, something has to go neglected. A 1000+ year old elf has probably hit that maximum. How to make that work in Hero is a very tough question (other than taking the very simple approach of placing a cap on the number of character points you can spend on skills). W.

1000 lb bomb and Chevy My problem with TUV is stuff like the following: the 1000 lb bomb does 4d6 RKA, 14 BODY average a 4-door sedan has 3 DEF and 14 BODY. Generally, your Chevy is going to survive a 1000 lb bomb blast. The M1 tank will survive it easily, which it should not. W.

Actually, yes I do mean stats for a god In the mythologies I mentioned, the gods are not all powerful. They may not even be any more powerful than a high powered super. Hercules certainly had a high, but limited strength, and he was stronger than any of the gods. Ares was a god of war who fought in wars. While he swayed the results, he didn't just wipe out the other side in a blink. Often, people hid from gods and thwarted their desires. They had superior senses but weren't all-knowing. I suspect that Dr. Destroyer would toast Hermes. Maybe not Thor or Zeus. For consistency of the Hero universe, and to follow comic-book tradition, the gods should probably be modeled as upper tier supers and treated as such, just as they are in DC and Marvel. But I'd like an eye kept on their true mythological capabilities as well. That will make them plenty powerful enough for Fantasy. One of the styles of fantasy it is very legitimate to run, and not munchkin at all, is the "Greek mythology" style of campaign where you interact with gods and demigods. Its such a big subject, it deserves its own book. W.

Variety of magic and gods? Apologies in advance if this has been discussed. I'm lazy and don't want to read through 14 pages of replies. I am struck by the vast variety of magic styles out there. Will Fantasy Hero sample magics cover these? Examples: Wild fantasy: the older FH was like this. Wizards could put up glowing force fields, and fly around hurling fireballs. Tolkeinish: magic has very little visible effects and its hard to tell what is magic. Gandalf touches the One Ring, which he has known about for years, and does not know it is the One Ring. He only knows it does magic because he SAW it do it. Except for when he fought the balrog, we don't see him do much. Wild fantasy is very inappropriate. Wheel of Time-like: Also, Sword of Truth-like. Zelazny's War World too, where magic was seen as ribbons that got formed into patterns. Magic is sort of a flow. You don't really have to gesture, incant, hace foci, etc. You see flows of magic and can channel it and bend it to your will. There seem to be no gods, and magic is almost "scientific". Very far from chicken guts and mystic words. Chicken guts, bat wings, love charms, very low power for the most part. Gods, demons, spirits. I'd love to see a sample god. Zeus, and Thor perhaps. Artemis and Freya. Anubis. Isis. A sample from these traditions of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian at least. When I think of styles of magic, I hope its not "Fire mages" and "Life mages" and the sort of stuff we got with the previous Fantasy Hero. That stuff is okay if there is room, but the above stuff is more important. One last thing: sample races that are "nearly human" are okay. Like D&D style elves. But Tolkein elves, that can tell a sparrow from a finch a mile away. They can walk without leaving footprints and walk atop snow, not slog through it. They don't need to sleep, they never grow old, you meet them frequently at thousands of years old. They have all sorts of subtle but expensive powers are very important too. I'd like to see someone take a stab at doing a usable form of that type of thing as a sample race also instead of some very generic, vanilla ones like we got with the older FH. W.

Harder to break? Any chance for a sentence or two about "Breaking Things"? Currently, any bozo with a dagger can chop down a tree in a few slashes. Well, maybe not, but its pretty bad. Any 2d6 attack, which nearly any Heroic PC can produce, can chop down a Large tree in about 6 hits, and there are no prohibitions (except what I set) against even arrows from being used for the same purpose. To be realistic, the body of the tree (11) ought to really go up by a factor of 5-10, or the DEF increased (though thats not realistic either). Other things may or may not be ok, but I've encountered the tree problem in play, so I KNOW its a bit off. W.