Xotl

13 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

Xotl

    Thank you so much for this!  I really appreciate it and super helpful.  Very easy to read and it steps you right through everything.  One question I had was the mention of an Armor roll for protection.  Where is that in the rules, did that come from Fantasy Hero Complete?

Thanks for the kind words.  The armour activation roll rules are from 6E2, pp. 210-212, or Fantasy Hero Complete p. 194; I'll add a page reference to this in the next revision.

Thanks, Brian.

Yes, I wrote it.  Did you have a question about it?

Hi all.  I've just updated my primer designed to introduce players (especially D&D players) to Fantasy Hero.  You can find it here:

https://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/367-fantasy-hero-primer/

I would have just bumped the old thread where we originally hashed it out, but the fabulous archive feature prevents this.  I don't intend to keep updating it on any sort of schedule, but if anyone finds any errors or has any suggestions that don't require too much page count / rewriting I'd be happy to consider them (for instance, I was going through the previous thread and saw someone talking about shield bashing, and added that in).

Excellent, thank you.

What about making a singular exception for the 6th Edition Rules Questions forum?  In terms of running the game it's by far the most valuable.

Is there any way for Hero to offer a torrent of the backed-up forums (minus all the Off-Topic stuff), or a standard solution for us to do the archiving ourselves that works with this forums software?

The "purge" statement says that old threads will be deleted: that's 14 years of posts, pretty much the entire modern history of the game.  All those rules discussions, character builds, official rulings, etc being lost would be a terrible blow to the system and its fans, IMHO.

Yeah, false memory on that one.

In any case, I've uploaded the final version to the Downloads section of the website.  Thanks all.

There's a cost difference?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary never told me that

I had the same reaction.  Both Champions Complete and FHC use 3 pts per, whereas Hero System base uses 5 pts per (error on my part).

I wish I could make my How To Play HERO System document look like yours...  

Heh, thanks.  It's just using generic MS Word, so anyone should be able to do it.  Text boxes, page borders, Book Antiqua font, and just a splash of colour here and there.  Avoiding underlining.  Also actively using whitespace: a lot of guys tend to overcram stuff into a page, but that makes it look overly busy.  It helps when you have someone as amazing as Martin McKenna to draw art from, as well.   If you want any other specific pointers, I'd be happy to offer some.

I'll definitely upload the final pdf to the site.  I just wanted to keep it just in this thread for a while to make sure that I'd ironed out all the errors and formatting tweaks, first.

I just want to say that this is sterling work. Very clear, gorgeously laid out, pitch-perfect level of detail for what you're setting out to achieve. It's proving very useful to me already.

Very glad to hear it.  I read your thread, linked to by Brian, and used some of your frustrations to make the text clearer (like "rolling" vs "result", normal damage vs. killing damage, and so on).

Please note I've updated it again, for what I hope is the last time (I missed a spot where I used the standard Hero 6th edition costs for OMCV/DMCV, vs the cheaper FHC costs, as well as a couple of other very minor things).  Link is the same above.

EDIT: file deleted, now that it's been uploaded to the main site.  Get it from there.

By the way, please don't let me be a wet blanket for what you've done! I don't want this to be the thing that suddenly makes everyone dog pile with critiques, or to make you doubt what you'e done. Don't try to change anything for me. Your vision is your own, and it's a dang good one! I hope everyone is inspired by this!

Missed this earlier.  Not a wet blanket at all: people shouldn't post things for criticism if they don't want criticism.  There were lots of good comments in this thread, yours included.  Thanks for taking the time to go over it.

Thank you very much for the kind words.  If you have any ideas as to how it could be specifically improved to meet what you had in mind, I'd be happy to hear it.

Also, if anyone is planning on downloading this, the links all expire on 15 Mar, since Dropbox is shutting down its public link service at that time.  I last updated it today (minor typo fixes).

Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 4d4 acid damage immediately and 2d4 acid damage at the end of its next turn. On a miss, the arrow splashes the target with acid for half as much of the initial damage and no damage at the end of its next turn.

Acid Arrow: roll to hit, and if you hit you do do damage now + half damage later.  If you miss, you do half damage now.

It's interesting, as since I've posted I've had lots of opportunity to think about this one spell but also conversion approaches in general.  I forgot that just because it's one effect in D&D it can be two or more in Hero, so bigdamnhero's/Christopher Taylor's solution works well.  At the same time, I realized that I'm not really interesting in recreating all the basic effects Hero can already do, but just the weird D&D spells that do atypical things you probably wouldn't think of yourself.  In other words, why convert Alter Self (Shape Change) or Aid (Aid) when there's something like Alarm or Animal Shapes to think about?

It's also made me realize just how boring most damage spells are in general: "ah, but this one is 4D6 damage, not 3D6, and the SFX are different".  But I do miss the abitrary ability to just say "this works" and call it a day that D&D has, because my god some of these power builds are ridiculously long.

I'm looking to recreate spells from D&D that have the effect of "if it hits it does full damage, and if it misses it still does half (or quarter, whatever) damage".  But of course, this has application outside of Fantasy.

To some degree this could be special effects, by stating that since you're doing damage you really didn't miss, did you?  But these effects are usually predicated on an attack roll and yes, the effect really does occur on a failed to-hit roll.

The reduced damage from the miss (the splash effect) is also tricky.  I don't want to do just do area effect explosion because the attack may not be an area effect attack.

I can always make a custom advantage.  I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything already in the rules first.

The great Martin McKenna (http://www.martinmckenna.net), of Fighting Fantasy, M:tG and other awesome art fame, just confirmed that I have permission to use his images in the pdf.  So that secures most of the art used in it right now.

Well my approach would be to put the powers in the appendix; not part of base character creation but in the back as optional, if someone really wants to make their own new spells.  That way the player is presented with "here's how to make ur d00d" in easy form at first, then can go into the back for more advanced stuff.

Sorry, I'm not clear on exactly what you're referring to.  What pages or material should go where?  What do you mean by "the powers"?

All right, I've concluded the Combat section with a page on normal damage, END use, and getting stunned.  Then there's an Appendix: that has a quickie guide to building magic systems and how to modify the game to capture various combat tones.  To ground people trying to find some basis for comparison, I've also placed the Characteristic Comparison chart there along with two monsters taken from the Hero Bestiary (I didn't want to use more because of copyright concerns; I think this is enough to get across the general idea of what a monster looks like without straying over the bounds of fair use).  I end with a bunch of links to product.

I think I'll call it a day here, unless anyone makes a good case for how something important is missing.  Some things discussed earlier -- even ones I thought might be good and was thinking of adding -- I decided to drop as the idea for the project evolved.  I want this to be a sort of general guide to how Fantasy Hero broadly works and what it can do, not a guide to how to specifically read or use Fantasy Hero Complete, even if it can't help but be that a bit since it draws on that book's material.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/357573/Fantasy%20Hero%20Primer.pdf

I'm also contacting the artists to see if they'll let me use their pieces for free distribution; I want to have that before I upload this to the Hero Games site proper.

The combat example in the current PDF is up to five pages.  I think I'll stop narratively detailing everything and simply take another half-page or so just outright stating what else could happen.  There's no need to take the combat to the very end; I just want illustrate the key elements of combat rather than tell a story, and I don't want to bore the reader.

By this point I have:

Initiative

Actions in general: half, full, attack, half-moves, weapon draws

Holding actions

STR Mins and STR adding to damage

Armour use

Regular vs. killing damage

Resistant defences

CSL usage

Recoveries

Anything else?

Added the next page of combat: the tricky issue of damage.

Sorry I've been out of the loop for a while. I've been busy. You mention in the "Digging Deeper" section on magic for Dominika that you'd have an example of extra END bought for spell usage, but I'm not seeing it. Am I just overlooking it? 

It's in her special abilities section (p. 13): +30 END, only to cast Shadow Magic.

Okay, continuing to work on this here and there when I have time.

I've removed the Characteristics Comparison table for the moment.  I still think it's very useful (especially since FHC doesn't have one like it), but now that I plan to add an appendix, I think it's better placed there than dropping a giant full-page table on readers just three pages in.  It's clearly reference material, rather than something you need to know for the walkthrough in progress.

I've also added the first three pages of the combat example.  There's no mention of exactly how many opponents are there because I haven't decided that yet: I'll add a number once it's all done, in order to make everything work out exactly as I want.  As always, feedback on what's there and any ideas of what should come next (especially cool ideas that show off the best of Hero System combat) would be appreciated:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/357573/Fantasy%20Hero%20Primer.pdf

Interesting, thanks.

Speaking of Knockback, I see Orb, from the same Enemies volume, has a -2D6 Knockback advantage as a +1/2 modifier.

As I recall, the Entangle "hardened" at +1 per phase, until it hit twice the original defenses. From that perspective, and recognizing Entangle was "+1d6 BOD and +1 DEF for 10 points", +3/4 to add 1 per phase, capping at double the initial amount, was pretty pricy.

The wording on the character writeup is that it gets stronger "per segment", not per phase (unless they changed the definition of segment and phase between 3rd and 4th ed, I suppose).  At a max of twice the original DEF (5), that would be +5 DEF in 5 segments.

Let's see: in 6th ed you can just buy the +5 DEF outright for +15 points (it actually comes as +2 DEF per 5 points, which means 15 points would get you +6 DEF, but it caps at a max of double the starting DEF (5), so that's +5 DEF instead of +6).  With that there's no waiting 5 segments for it to take action.  That does sound better than taking a +3/4 advantage (3 or 4 points cheaper, and the effect is immediate rather than delayed).  Seems like it should be a +1/2 instead.

In any case, it sounds like I should find a copy of Champions III.  I wonder if there were any other advantages and disadvantages like that that didn't carry over.

6E1 p. 323

1) If I buy an AoE explosion attack, No Range, Hole in the Middle, does the explosion still count the initial 2m area (the starting 2m area the attacker is standing in)?  In other words, does the fact that I bought hole in the middle (an advantage) cause some of the explosion to be lost, or does the explosion only start counting from the point past the hole?  I would assume the latter, since it seems strange to get penalized by an advantage, but I want to be sure.

2) Regardless of the above, I'm trying to figure out exactly how explosion drop-off is calculated.

"With an Explosion, the full effect of the base power occurs at the target point and 2m beyond that within the Area. The damage done by or effect of the power decreases by one Damage Class (see 6E2 97) or 5 Active Points in the power for every 2m distance from the target point within the Area."

However, further down it says:

"The Area purchased for an Explosion has to be bought to the appropriate size for the DCs in the attack to diminish to zero — in other words, the Area needs to be at least 2m + (2m x DCs). For example, a Blast 12d6, Area Of Effect (Cone Explosion) would need to be bought to have a 26m Cone"

The first part quoted seems to me to say ground zero is the first two meters ("the target point and 2m beyond that within the Area"); since we're not using hexes anymore, it makes sense that the target point really is a point, rather than an area.  This would mean that the full damage is done to the first two meters (2m all around a central "point"), and then every two metres beyond it drops off. For a 4D6 attack, that would be:

0-2 metres: 4D6, 3-4 metres 3D6, 5-6 metres 2D6, 7-8 metres 1D6

However, the second part quoted says quite clearly that it's 2m + (2 x DC).  For a 4D6 attack, that would be:

0-2 metres: 4D6, 3-4 metres 4D6, 5-6 metres 3D6, 7-8 metres 2D6, 9-10 metres 1D6

Which is right?  Thanks for your time.

So I'm going through 3rd edition's Enemies: The International File in my general attempt to update those villains I thought worth saving to 6th edition.  Riplash (p. 27) has a couple of advantages on her 5D6 entangle that I'm not sure about.

The first is one that increases the entangle by 1 DEF each segment.  It's listed as a +3/4 advantage.  I'm wondering if:

a.) that's legal

b.) that's a standard option for entangles, and

c.) you think the advantage modifier is fair

She also has with the entangle "has one BODY only, only vs. one victim at a time" for a collective -1.  Now, "only has 1 Body" is a standard option for -1/2, but the way that this is glued to "only one victim at a time" confuses me.  I would assume that "only one victim at a time" would be it's own -1/2 limitation (assuming that value is right as well, which is another thing I'm not sure about).

Lastly, she has an attack with a 2D6 RKA that's "Based on Entangle" at a -1/2 modifier.  What exactly does that mean?  Linked, if I had to guess, but I'm not sure.  They're both (the RKA and the Entangle) listed as coming from her whip arm, which is a focus, if that matters.

Thanks.

Updated again at the standard link with the third and final full-build/walkthrough character, a rogue.  That's 17 pages.  I think I'll aim for 32 pages, which I think should be pretty doable.

That's like saying you don't know why a human has disguise when they'd be unable to pass as anything else.  The Digging Deeper section on the right mentions it in passing (and mentions pickpocketing as well to help convey freedom from "class" skills), but basically I wanted to get across the idea of how things work in a multi-racial world.

PDF also updated with a two-page section on mundane and magical weapons and armour.