Talon

Re: Does this make ANY sense? 5 point INT levels are, at present, a bit silly in games without NCM. If you want the "good at skills but not observant" effect, buy lots of INT and then a "Absent Minded" Physical Limitation that gives him a PER penalty. (That's actually even better for the concept, since you can phrase the Phys. Lim in such a way as to give him good PER rolls for science-y things that no one else would notice.)

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event Power level and style. Your JI game has someone with a Deflecto-Shield; an analagous fantasy game would have a fairly high level of magic, it seems to me. Of course, you might specifically want to do something different -- in which case you should make that really clear in the event description. That way people have something useful that they can not read.

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event I think it would be cool for people to worship the gods -- after all, they were gods -- but that doesn't mean they get cleric spells. It could be a Roman kind of thing, where there are a lot of traditions and rituals which people treat with varying degrees of seriousness. (It sounds like even though magic technically comes from the gods, it's not something that the gods have control over -- they can't deny magical power to someone they don't like.)

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event

Re: The Saga of the Smiling Fox -- possible future convention event Given your other games (and thus the reputation you likely have, and the kind of people who will come looking), I would have a mid to high level of magic. Two magic-users in the party sounds about right. I like the idea of there NOT being dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc...that will help distinguish the world from D&D. One neat idea would be to make one PC be from a completely "out there" race (a sprite, centaur, air elemental, etc.). I would also think about whether or not you want to interact at all with your other games -- since the world has a SuperSquad tie-in, in theory you could have them show up, which would be neat but which could also diminish the fantasy atmosphere.

Re: How to get ideas across (GM's) There's a bunch of character questionnaries floating around out there that might serve as a good starting point.

Re: Combat Sense with the Ranged Adder I intend to follow the principle that altering Talents requires GM permission in general, but this one seems reasonable enough to me.

Re: The Ultimate Skill (micro review) It's a good book -- I'm up to Climbing thus far. The only complaint I have is that while there are a lot of options provided, there is not a lot of reasoning behind them (when or why you should use a given option, or one option over another). I would have liked to see a bit more categorization (for example, options defined as being for skill-heavy, average, or skill-light games), so GMs have an easier time figuring out what to use. OTOH, the Climbing section was exactly what I was hoping for -- a set of well-defined modifiers so that everyone can have a common understanding of what Climbing will let you accomplish.

Re: Question on my characters multipower Some GMs might be happier with an Aid to the END Reserve bought as a slot in the MP (plus it will charge faster ). It seems reasonable to me -- there's an intermediate power storage system between the actual power generation and the suit itself. If you are not charging the weapons / propulsion / whatever, the storage system builds up again.

Re: Starting a SH campeign I've been thinking about running a sci-fi game, and it does seem like there's a daunting number of questions to be addressed. Unlike a fantasy game where there is a tendency to downplay the larger effects of magic on society, in sci-fi I at least want to do the opposite; given a set of technologies, what would combat/communications/travel/everything-else be like? It's a bit scary!

Re: Six-Armed Ginsu Cuisinart If you really really want a character that can do six things at once (not just attack, but other stuff like drive a car, play poker, and juggle while also wielding a sword and shooting a gun, consider getting Duplication with the special effect that the Duplicates are "merged together" -- effectively, each arm is a Duplicate or something like that.

Re: Magic and Mechanics, to you Very general question, hard to answer with specifics. I tend to go for "magic is rare" settings; my usual guideline is that mage characters should be notably less combat efficient than non-mage characters (the tradeoff being access to all sorts of interesting effects and abilities, of course). I find that it's not so much a question of what mechanics you use, but rather establishing a story-based theme for magic and emphasizing that theme over the mechanics. If my players are talking about the nature of magic rather than the game rules for it, I feel I have done my job.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues The threadjacking has been productive (and not really threadjacking, the whole point is "stuff that is relevant to bringing D&D players into Hero"). Ah, here's the issue with "attack and move" that had been avoiding me. In D&D, you can do a "Full Move and attack" action ("Charge"), which in Hero would be Strike, FMove, +2 OCV, -2 DCV. Thus, if someone strikes and fades, you can run them down with the only downside being your DCV -- and most people who run away are the types who don't do tons of damage to start with. In Hero, you don't have the same generous Full-Move-and-attack options. (To establish my "Hero cred", I've been playing since 2nd edition or so of Champions -- the color cover, and have run superhero, western, modern day psi, fantasy, and sci-fi including a few convention games over the past 20+ years. My players, on other hand, know pretty much nothing about Hero other than me enthusing about how dope it is.)

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues Thanks for the posts, Thia! I myself have plenty of Hero experience, but my players do not. I'm anticipating some transitions pains, most of which I have dealt with in the past. The AoO one is new though, as this is the first time since D&D 3E that I'm converting people to Hero. The example was useful (and entertaining!)...and brings up a question. I had actually been thinking about getting rid of the "Attack ends your Phase" rule, just because I had not seen any reasons against doing so. It sounds like you have experience with the matter...any comments?

Re: Thoughts on the Speed Zone Need some aspirin? Agreed -- I was actually saying that pretty much all speedsters will gain abilities to, if not hurt, at least incapacitate opponents. This makes the Speed Zone more, not less, dangerous.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues This discussion is very helpful -- thanks all! I think that the expectation of AoOs is likely to be more of a problem than their actual absence. That is, players will take a while to remember that they don't have to worry about them, which will affect their actions and strategies in combat.

Re: Thoughts on the Speed Zone Don't have the book, but this does look flat out dangerous. It doesn't fit at all into the Hero cost structure (think of the cost to reduce all characters within range to 0 DCV, as a start), and pretending that it does is likely to cause trouble. Oh, and I can think of several things a speedster "unable to hurt a villain" could do to the villain in the Speed Zone: move them (next to the brick, out of combat, over a cliff, etc.), blind them (hat over the eyes!), etc.

Re: Can someone satisfy my curiosity? My suspicion would be.. a) TA came out first, has had more time to build supporters TA is closer to That Other Game, so people looking to convert players with a minimum of fuss might be picking that game. c) TA is closer to what a friend termed the Generic Fantasy Continuum, the default from which all fantasy-themed RPGs, computer games, etc. proceed

Re: All Scots don't have 17 str!

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues In my case, I would say the objective is to support a "feel" that opponents who leave themselves open near a foe are placed at a disadvantage. Ideally this would happen regardless of what the hero was doing at the time.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues Heh, you compiled as I was reading the threads. The issue I have with "Abort to move" (which was pointed out) is that it penalizes the defending character. Villain goes to move past, hero aborts to move, villain attacks the hero anyway -- rinse, lather, repeat. Here are some ideas bouncing around my head: -- Move the AoO rules into Hero wholesale. This would be more of a rules experiment than anything, else, I think overall it would be a huge headache (but would make for an interesting forum post ) -- Create a limited AoO rule (to be Hero-esque, declare that all characters have a free Trigger Naked Advantage that can be applied to any attack) for when people run past. -- New Combat Modifier. Call it "Engaged". If you move past/around an opponent who you were fighting with (or who could engage you, GM's discretion), 1/2 OCV and DCV. Stretch or restrict the application of the rule based on genre.

Re: Moving from D&D - rules issues A five-foot square and a 2m (6.2 ft?) hex don't seem all that different in size...but then there's already a big thread on the area of a hex. According to Hero rules, you can move through the same hex as an opponent, something which is highly verboten in D&D (there are entire Combat Maneuvers devoted to moving someone out of a square). I know that some of my players will have a hard time getting into the mindset where people can run past them unless they take a Held Action. (This is the kind of thing that can unduly prejudice people against a system, so I'm trying to pre-emptively come up with the best way to handle it.)

Re: All Scots don't have 17 str! It's worse than that -- you also lose 1 Damage Class for every 5 STR below the STR Min you are, making using such a weapon more or less useless. I simply use the older Hero rules for STR Min, where you get OCV penalties but not damage penalties. I find that this balances out fairly well -- I had a 13 STR character who regularly used a greatsword, taking the OCV penalty in exchange for more damage. Scots making wildly inaccurate, highly damaging attacks? Seems about right.

I'm ending a long-time D&D game, and starting a Hero game of some sort, with players who have not played the Hero System in the past. While I have no concern about their ability to learn the system, I do have a little concern that the lack of certain rules in Hero will confuse them. In particular: -- No "attack of opportunity" rules -- In a larger sense, the ease of running around/past someone Have other people encountered these issues, and if so, how have you dealt with them?

Re: Archery Ballistics Not an expert, but I recall from past discussions that arrows do far more damage than their momentum / kinetic energy would indicate (especially when comparing to the energy in bullets). I used to have a link to a study which showed that destroyed tissue was the key factor in wound severity -- bullets would destroy some tissue and "compress" a lot more (which would recover fairly quickly), while an arrow would not compress anything but would slice through quite a bit. Alas, the link went dead a long time ago.