Markdoc

Re: Spell Advice Keep it simple. X-DM movement to the future with side effect "Body remains vulnerable throughout". Anybody mess with the body and you arrive in the future already long dead. The side effect in this case would be a huge RKA limited "damage of side effect limited to damage inflicted" Cheers, Mark

Re: Clever Future Weapons Nah, I've seen enough trauma up close to be able to make a good guess. But it would be pretty academic - you get a hole in even a secondary artery where you can't pinch it off and you're dead unless you're alreday in an operating theatre

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? Yeah, pretty much. It sounds fairly sensible to me, but it's not a core rule. I know the rules, pretty well (or so I thought) and I'd never heard of this before. Edit: I do have TUB, and I've seen this rule there, but I just checked agin: there's nothing to suggest it should be treated as core. cheers, Mark

Re: Clever Future Weapons

Re: Rolling lots of D6s To me, Standard effect has always been a tool specifically for building precise effects. So, I agree you wouldn't want to use it for EB, or really pretty much anything that has to beat defences. But for things like transform, aid, etc where you want to be able to pre-define effects, it's useful. To take an example, for an Aid defined as increased SPD, it's convenient to know that the first time it kicks in, you increase one point of SPD and the second time, two more. A random 5d6 roll roll might give +2 SPD off a first lucky roll, but it might also fail to give you any. The same goes for things like transforms which are defined as changing X into Y, a healing spell, etc. In general, these are powers are those with cumulative effects, so standard effect lets you say "In 2 rolls this power hits maximum effect". cheers, Mark

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

Re: Active Points For Spell Builds

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much?

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? Yep. As far as I can see this is all positive, with no negatives in sight. The only change I'd make is mixing OCV and ECV, which I think muddies things a bit. Since this "multiple attack" is supposed to reflect a single attack utilizing more than one power (not multiple different attacks: that's what SPD is for), I'd seperate them and keep the "one roll" principal. The second reason for doing that is that it decreases the chance of just blazing away in the hopes of rolling a good hit. cheers, Mark

Re: Clever Future Weapons Accident. I've told the whole gory story before on the boards, but the short version is, my younger brother had been out shooting earlier in the day and was goofing around with a rifle he was sure he'd unloaded. The amusing part was after he'd plugged me and I'd toppled over fountaining blood from my head, he ran outside to where my dada was working in the garden and shouted "Dad, Dad! Somebody's shot Mark in the head and he's dead!" cheers, Mark

Re: Pulping the Renaissance Oddly enough, I had exactly this discussion with my wife last weekend (about Conan). My argument, boiled down, is that fantasy fiction in the pulp era (which remember, is a name bestowed after the event) was known as "Swords and Sorcery". ERB's work was also written in the same era and style but John Carter of Mars is generally called "SF" or "Planetary fiction", and Robert Bloch was writing for the same periodicals at the same time - but his work is generally called "Horror". If someone says "pulp" I don't think of pirates, eldritch horror or barbarians - even though those all appeared in pulp-era periodicals. I think two-fisted heroes, exotic locations, feisty molls, masked crusaders and the occasional nazi zeppelin-mounted death ray. So Solomon Kane comes from the same era of writing, but then so do Dusnany's stories like the Pegana Cycle, which even though it deals with fantastical lands is hardly pulp. Edit: not that it matters - as someone pointed out upthread, you can transport the attitude, which is what really counts. For that matter, I ran a series of fun adventures (in a fantasy settings) which were a direct rip-off of the ripping yarns I consumed at a lad - doughty british adventurers in the mountains of Afghanistan, etc became a doughty band of fantasy adventurers in the mountains of Somewhereelsesistan. No further changes were needed. cheers, Mark

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? Not really. The core rules are still the core rules. Everything in the ultimate series (or genre books, for that matter) are GM's-call optional extras. cheers, Mark

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System It's true to say that most of my players have only a very vague idea of how the mechanics of Hero work: for them I do the character design. After Tuesday's game one player has said he wants to learn martial arts and wanted to know how much. I said "About 20 points" which made him gasp a bit. So much? I simply waggled a finger and said "The path to mastery is long and cannot be walked in an afternoon" - at which point he was happy. It's all in the presentation. cheers, Mark

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System One of the reasons I love HERO system as a GM is that the design work is up front. Once I have designed the game feel I want, I rarely, if ever, have to worry about mechanics because I already know how things work. It's very, very, rare indeed for player requests to flummox me, so I can concentrate on the story.

Re: Does anyone use the Independent Limitation? No, that's perfectly reasonable. It's how I do it myself. As you say when the potion is stolen or used, you don't lose the points. You can always make more. Again, no. The Viper agents don't get independent because if they get their blaster smashed up, they can just get another one. It might take them some time, it might be difficult (or it might not) but they can get another one. When the focus is temporarily gone, the agent can't use the powers, but the points are still there. If the nest is out of blasters, he might get a pulsar cannon instead, but whatever. The same applies - as I read it - to your magical thief. You might use up/lose items from your VPP, but you don't lose the points: you can steal new magics to use those points. However, if you take Independant, and lose or use an item those points are gone. You can't steal a new item to "fill" that point allocation. For items outside the VPP, that might be appropriate (it's also where the savings are biggest). But you have to decide if you are OK with those items going away permanently. If not just describe it as an "unbreakable" focus: meaning the character can't make a new one, but if they lose it, can get the old one back at some point. I do use independant in my games, but I use it rarely. Ironically, it is seeing quite a lot of use in the current game, where I use it to simulate the old celtic "geas" thing. Players can get magical powers with Independant as a limitation, but also have to take a geas (as a side effect). That makes powers cheap But if the player ever breaks the geas, he loses the power, which in game terms, means suffers a significant penalty since those points go away. It also means the players end up with nifty geases like "May never give or receive a gift" "May never mistreat an animal" "Always pass standing stones on the shadowed side", etc, which adds a nice flavour to that particular style of magic. cheers, Mark

Re: Clever Future Weapons

Re: Clever Future Weapons Weird stuff happens in wars. My dad served with a guy who was creeping forward at night when the Germans tossed a grenade at him. He heard something land on the ground near him felt around frantically in the dark: and ended up putting his hand on the grenade, just as it went off! He suffered lacerations to his palm and temporary deafness and that's it. I, on the other hand, took a .22 to the head and spent a week in intensive care, another week in hospital and two weeks bedrest, plus another operation a couple of years later. There ain't no justice. cheers, Mark

Re: Multiple Power Attacks: How much is too much? Thinking about it, this may have been the key reason that MPAs were a major problem in our heroic/heroic style games: it's not uncommon for attacks to be able to do BOD through typical defences on a decent roll and plenty of STUN damage is a given. In that situation, where an MPA is used, getting double STUN on a target can often put them right out in a single hit. cheers, Mark

Re: Can this be done x 2 What does it say that I already considered Ego attack but settled on Mind Control (one command only, stand still, think of madeleines and quietly weep, -1) cheers, Mark

Re: Can this be done x 2 No, it's not heresy: you're confusing special effects and powers again. Powers interact with the universe around the players, which is also built with powers. As a GM, I'd permit the approach you suggest above (with the caveat to the player up front that you cannot teleport objects into other objects without buying a heaping helping of RKA: no fair trying to get a free power). But if he buys the power, then he gets to use it. To make it work, he's going to need teleport, usable as an attack, he's going to have to make attack rolls to put his target exactly where he wants, etc. But the power is buildable as you describe. In fact, here's a character I played with exactly that power. Note that he also has things like Forcewall and RKA, to cover common power uses. Of course, a smart GM would just say "Yeah you are pretty sure the match went in the gas tank. Nothing happens. No, you don't know why" since a match submerged in gasoline (away from oxygen) will just go out. But that's just a side issue: with a little more work, you could come up with something suitable (teleport a grenade into the gas tank, if you had one, for example). A guy with EB could also blast the gas tank to crate an area effect explosion without having to buy the explosion advantage himself. Heh. You are neither alone, nor crazy, just a little confused over how the system works. Again, the player defines his own powers. He then uses those powers to interact with the universe. So no, you can't "summon napalm". That's not a power. But if there is napalm lying around (either because you, as the player bought a triggered RKA, or because the GM provided some) then yeah, you can light it with a match. You can - for example - use your energy blast to shoot a chain and drop a bunch of building material to pin your foe without buying entangle. But that relies on there being a chain, a bunch of building material, a foe underneath it, etc. That's an improvised attack and like the match that goes out in liquid gasoline, may not function exactly as you like. If you want to entangle opponents routinely, buy entangle. cheers, Mark

Re: How Much Food? Which is why they all froze to death on their way to Moscow. Fools! If only they'd walked instead! cheers, Mark

Re: Can this be done x 2 Simple enough: Mindlink to do the talking thing, power usable by others, Line Of Sight Not Needed advantage. This, OTOH, you can't do, and a damn good thing, too. There is no way to award yourself extra character points just because you have a cool special effect. Another core Hero system maxim is that you pay for what you get and you get what you pay for. I have played a character who can duplicate other people's powers, but he could only do so up to the point that he could afford to purchase. That's still a powerful ability, but it is not (in hero system) a gateway to limitless power. As GM, you can build this NPC by giving her sufficient points to cover any likely combination of powers: the mechanic is the same as that used by PCs even if the magnitude of the effect is not. It's not necessary for players to see behind the curtain: if she can duplicate every power they know about, then she can "duplicate any power" as far as they are concerned. But points are the heart of the system. Any power where you say "points don't matter" or "the magnitude of the effect doesn't matter" is not going to be modelled in Hero system. cheers, Mark

Re: Pulping the Renaissance I wouldn't call it "pulp" since that assumes a special place and time as well as heroic two fisted adventuring, but you could certainly do this in the era you suggest. You simply need to "fantasize it up" a little. Someone's already mentioned Munchhausen. I'm reading with great pleasure "De cape et de croc" (Cloak and Dagger, basically) a comic which folows the fortunes of two gentlemen from Venice to Malta, to the sunken ruins of Atlantis, to unknown tropical islands and to ... the moon, meeting - along the way - renegade Janissaries, beautiful gypsies, lovesick swains, relentless and ruthless knight commanders, lusty, but honourable merchants ... er, pirates, tropical natives, learned scholars, Selenites, combat mimes ("What's he doing?" "I think he's shouting for assistance!") monsters, the Flying Dutchman ("See? Nothing supernatural about it at all! It's a perfectly ordinary shipwreck, on the back of a perfectly ordinary sea-monster!", whirlpools, death traps, etc. I'd play in that campaign in a second. cheers, Mark

Re: How Much Food? They were also expected to "forage". That hard tack was long-lasting stuff and intended to carry them through periods when foraging wasn't an option Sure, magic can help with anything. In our D&D game, where magic is common, virtually every single character now has a Heward's handy haversack, an Everful mug and a Pouch of endless rations. It's worth the cost to carry all your gear, and all the food and drink you'll ever need in the equivalent of a small day pack. In my FH game where that sort of magic is rare, the sea-mage can use his magic to help the PCs fish for food, or to call rain if they lack water, one of the players is an excellent hunter, and they carry hard tack for those times when they cannot forage or buy food. In some cities or fortresses there are magical cornucopia that produce an endless stream of food. cheers, Mark

Re: Spell Advice Here's two suggestions: put the "tricky spell" in the VPP as a "spell" the PC knows but specify that it must always come with a single charge. That's a -2 limit plus whatever other limitations the spells have, so it shouldn't soak up too much of the pool. That allows the mage (when learning his spells) to set aside some of the pool to spontaneously utilise for a spell. Unlike his other spells, however, which he can use all day long, the tricky spell is gone until he can rest his brain for a day. You could flavour this by letting him set aside as many charges as he wants, using up more of the pool for spontaneous (but limited use) casting. Alternatively use Aid - to the pool itself. That way, the caster can use the tricky spell to enlarge the pool to the point where he has enough oomph to add in an extra spell to his "daily ration". That might take several phases, but he might even get a couple of uses out it before the pool collapses back to the point where he can't use it, which seems balanced: the requirement to use one or more phases pumping up your pool to the point where you can access a spell should prevent mages doing this routinely: it's mostly be useful for out of combat situations. (The caveat would be that mages would mostly load up with combat spells and save the rest for use via the tricky spell). cheers, Mark