Markdoc

Re: Alignments I'd call it exactly what you did - affiliation. It's like in my current game: the Lord laments "When I came here, I drove the pirates away. I run a fair town, where merchants can trade in freedom, and mothers are not scared to let their children play in the streets. The peasants pay their taxes cheerfully because they are not too heavy and we no longer have tax-farmers roaming the roads with their spiky clubs and branding irons. Everyone is happy! But, nooooo, cast one tiny, inoffensive necromantic spell and suddenly I'm some kind of "dark lord" and people are lining up to stick a sword in me." cheers, Mark

Re: Alignments Yep. Although Elric formally serves the Gods of Chaos, he has no problem handling both "good-aligned" and "evil-aligned" artifacts, and actually spends much of his life actually trying to thwart the plans of his evil patrons. That doesn't stop him casually murdering people when he's in a bad mood. (Note: this refers to "Classic Elric" not the newer, emo "Elric-Lite" from his recent revival.) His alignment, if he had any, was Lawful-Chaotic Goodevil. cheers, Mark

Re: Alignments When confronted with that question my "good" Ranger said "Think of me as Nature's way of balancing their population growth." cheers, Mark

Re: Urban Fantasy dead horses.

Re: D&D 4th Not really - because the amount of damage that you can mete out with combos has also increased and the intended number of encounters per day has increased also. These rules mean (just like WoW) that you can solo without a cleric, but that big raids are going to need a cleric (or three) Because it's cool! Duh! (OK, real reason? I'm guessing it's because thieves, sorry, rogues, can do something like this in WoW: they need to get invisible to flank and do mondo damage) cheers, Mark

Re: D&D 4th Ah! I don't play MORPGs, so I didn't know where that came from: I thought it was response to the cleric's lament "I can't use all these cool spells, because otherwise we'll have no healing! Waaah!" cheers, Mark

Re: Alignments My friend Fitz had an interesting idea which I rather liked. That was that most people and most things didn't have an alignment but that there were powers of Darkness and Light, Chaos and Order who could and did interfere. In this setting, having an alignment was something you actively chose. By choosing for example "Lawful Good" or "Neutral Evil" you were explicitly aligning yourself with a specific set of powerful divinities. That had some advantages - as long as those divinities noticed you and liked your activities, they might lend a little help: some divine power, the assistance of another allied Hero or creature, even some divine intervention if you were important enough, recruitment into their heaven if you die taking one for the team, etc. However, by choosing an alignment you also marked yourself out as a player in the game - and people with the right magic or powers could tell that: so it brought you some serious negatives as well. The divinities in question might expect a bit of grovelling, they might expect you to help other aligned heroes or to carry out some quest and you have a big invisible sign on your forehead saying "Stab me!" that some players on the opposing teams can see. It also means that certain places or items could be dedicated to a certain alignment also. That to me sounds like an interesting setting - and a decent use for alignment. cheers, Mark

Re: Building an Urban Fantasy Setting The "higher state" that magic taps is merely the vast unconscious of all humans: as such it reflects the current cultural state of the population: that state varies from place as the population generating it does and what can be drawn from it reflects - to some extent - their cultural biases. Normal humans touch this state when dreaming: mages can tap it while awake. In some circumstances (generally involving a magical breach to that realm) it can spill over into the waking world, resulting in monsters or people with abnormal powers. There are no "magical races" - the different types of vampires, werewolves, Yuan-ti, chupacubra, etc are all manifestations of the dream state or people who have been altered by some connection. That's why monsters have traditionally been area specific, even if some primal fears are found everywhere and why (for example) western magic like Alchemy is different from Kabbalism and they are both different from Feng Shui, both in methods and in goals and philosophy. There: that incorporates the two previous posts cheers, Mark

Re: How do you handle healing?

Re: D&D 4th I do find it kind of weird that you heal people by hurting other people..... cheers, Mark

Re: D&D 4th

Re: Dragonia You are correct. There's Dragonia the roleplaying game and Legends of Dragonia (another roleplaying game: I think there's third called realms of Dragonia) there's the Dragonia Manga and Dragonia the movie, there's Dragonia the video game and Dragonia the civ II mod and probably a thousand others I haven't heard of. Cheers, Mark

Re: The Odds are Always Against the House Probably the simplest way would be "Luck, usable as attack, area effect selective, continuous, 1 charge lasting 1 year" How many dice is up to you, you could make it last longer but the casino is likely to be out of business by then . You can then attack - selectively - anyone in the area of effect, gifting them with incredible luck. Since it's selective, you are not going to be doing the same for croupiers or house dealers. This would work even for games where skill is not an issue such as roulette and slots. cheers, Mark

Re: Energiser Bunny Effect I had a weeble character (Kestrel) who I must say was a lot of fun to play (he remains one of my favourite superhero characters). He was essentially a middle-level martial artist with a tiny gadget pool/utility belt: his only "superpower" was "regeneration". Essentially he was an "agent" with one power. He got hit more than a regular martial artist, but he could deal with the hit. The build was self only Aid to STUN (continuous, persistent, 0 END, with increased maximum as already mentioned: I didn't bother to make it inherent), plus regeneration, plus damage reduction and decent CON and BOD. The damage reduction is key, because it essentially doubles the effect of your Stun Aid (making it cost effective: which otherwise it isn't, really) and keeps you from being wiped out with a single large hit. If your GM is nice, you can roll the whole lot into an EC called "Wolveregeneration" or something similar. It's not really a munchkin build because it's still not super-efficient. It's going to be a big chunk of the character either way: figure on around 100 points on this "power". But if you do that, the character really is a weeble: with 50% damage reduction and 2d6 STUN aid even an attack that does 100 STUN through his defences will fully "heal" in a turn if he's SPD6: attacks on a more normal scale will heal in 2-3 phases - meaning the character can usually soak one or two hits per turn and stay functional - more, give him a few phases unhit, and he'll be fresh as a daily (relatively speaking). This has several advantages over the "High defences actually represents regeneration of damage" approach (which is perfectly viable: just not what I wanted in this case). The first is "feel". In this case, mechanics = SFX. The character does get hurt and he does get better. Secondly, it allows you to face off against opponents with exotic attacks and have the character perform as desired. Since you don't rely on your defences as much as a Brick, an opponent who can avoid defences is actually not much more dangerous to you than a conventional one. Thirdly, it means that the character can still be threatened by lower-powered opponents: lots of small attacks are as dangerous as one big one - again, this is different from the high def builds. Now, Kestrel did spend a fair amount of time lying down taking recoveries, but he was always there at the end of the fight. In fact, the GM actually expressed some frustration (along with some admiration) at exactly how hard the character was to take out of play: and to me it suited exactly the "torn costume, covered in blood, but still going" image I had. My only other comment is that you need some other shtick for this guy unless you want to play Punchingbag Boy. Since it sound like you don't want other superpowers, depending on the game this could be super soldier (a weapons and gear gadget pool) wandering immortal (lots of skills, a sword) martial artist (guess the power set!) or infiltration expert/bounty hunter (Stealth, concealment, computing skills, a weapon or two, lots of skills), etc cheers, Mark

Re: Urban Fantasy: Warnings I'd actually class Urban fantasy as any that fits "contemporary/near contemporary setting, with supernatural elements". The mere fact that you can identify a specific subgenre so neatly like "vampire erotic fantasy" by definition means it *isn't* the definition of urban fantasy, per se. So I'd file Sanctuary and Anhk-Morepork into standard fantasy under "High Fantasy" (it started at "Gritty Fantasy", but didn't stay there long) and "Heroic fantasy, comedic" respectively. Horror I see as a subgenre of Urban Fantasy - though perhaps one so distinct as to deserve its own genre. cheers, Mark

Re: Defences against the stun of KAs I agree. Killing attacks that don't penetrate defences should do little if any stun. That solves several problems with one hit. First, it eliminates the much hated stun-lottery (personally it doesn't bother me that much, but I acknowledge that many people do hate it.) Second, it provides a simple way to build the bullet-resistant Brick comic in comic books: if you have decent rPD, you need fear no ordinary bullets Third, it actually gives you a reason to use EB such as the energy blaster used by some super agents: if bullets won't stop him, at least the blaster might hurt him... cheers, Mark

Re: Urban Fantasy dead horses.

Re: Urban Fantasy: Warnings And you can get lost walking to the Kwikee-Mart on the corner for milk.... cheers, Mark

Re: What is Your Inner Character? I got Lawful Good Aasimar Monk/Cleric/Sword Sage! cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread Yep, that's some standout stuff! cheers, Mark

Re: Complex Sectional Armor The simplest way to to do this is to work out what your minimum armour is - buy that all over. Then buy the next heaviest amour to cover your desired areas: work out what the activation roll is (the table for that has already been posted) and buy it with that limit and so on. So for example, a suit that gave 8 PD/ED to the hands and feet, 16 PD/ED to the arms and legs and 24 PD/ED to the torso and head would be bought as: 8 PD/ED +8 PD/ED (act 11-, -1) +8 PD/ED (act 8-, -2) - or if you were using hit locations, covering the designated areas. In play you simply roll your location or activation roll: with the latter if you roll 12+ you get 8 DEF, if you roll 11 to 9, you get 16 DEF and if you roll 8- you get 24 DEF (for example) cheers, Mark

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero Yep: I have a character in the current FH game that has this power, justified as "excellent judge of character, can read body language well". "Gather information" is context dependant - streetwise for gathering rumors off the street, high society for gathering it during a formal dinner, Computing for extracting it from a database, conversation for extracting it from some guy in a bar and interrogation from some guy chained to a wall.... It's not really a skill per se as a description of what you use skills for. In D20, though, it's described as "An evening’s time, a few gold pieces for buying drinks and making friends, and a DC 10 Gather Information check get you a general idea of a city’s major news items" which is closest to streetwise. cheers, Mark

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: S&S in Renaissance Florence

Re: S&S in Renaissance Florence