Markdoc

Re: Changing Magic I faced the same problem when using the Runequest setting, and settled on -1/2 "Requires appropriate runes" with the base assumptions that drawing a rune was a concentration-requiring activity that took at least an action per rune (a phase after all, is only 3-4 seconds) and that a rune that was obscured or damaged was no longer functional. With those limitations, I figured it was about the same as OIF or "weapon of opportunity". Since almost all magic used it, the significance of runes was well known (making it hard to pass off as a simple tattoo!). A character using a tattooed rune (pretty common) could expect to have them scarred over if he was captured (hence acting similarly to an OIF, except that a well-placed stab in combat or even a handful of mud could do the same: remember they have to be unobscured - so a little less effective than an OIF). If he could find something to draw with, he could get the powers back - similar to a focus of opportunity - but unlike a focus of opportunity - a sword say - you'd be at risk taking the time to redraw it in combat. I can see dropping the limit to -1/4, but in the end decided to hold it at -1/2 because luck and your cult determined ultimately what runes you had access to, giving a further limitation - the exact sze of the limitation ultimately is a GM's decision, based on how limitingit will be in the campaign cheers, Mark

Re: Eberron Hero Depends on how you want him to develop. If you want him to be more combat capable, buy some levels, perhaps specifically in "dodge" or combat luck. If you want to be able to "grit your teeth and bear it" by some extra CON, with "No figured CHA" and perhaps with "requires an EGO roll" to enable to to take the hit and not lose his spell. You could buy some armour Or if you want to avoid developing more combat abilities, try to ensure there is someone between you and them when you need to cast spells - even if that means "Wow! I almost got killed! I need to hire a bodyguard!" cheers, Mark

Re: Why must wolves be evil?

Re: D&D Spellbooks as Bases Exactly - In DnD, the spell always goes off (unless you get an arrow in the chest midway through) but doesn't always have any effect. In Hero (with RSR) it doesn't always go off, but it always has an effect (depending on defences, it may not have *much* effect, but that's true in D20, too). When I convert systems with "saving throws" I simply assume that RSR and/or the attack roll take its place. Nope - in such a situation, it's a good idea to sink a decent number of points into your skill roll.

Re: Charging for Magic: New thoughts & input needed Two approaches - VPP you've basically covered: expensive setup but no limitation on spells apart from what you get, which means it becomes increasingly effective with time (not necessarily a bad thing). The biggest problem - as you have alreday found out - is accomodating the occasional high pointage spell. The other option is Multipower. For D&D magic, this is easy to do - with gestures, incantations and concentration (for that "attack of opportunity" feel), you're already at -1 in limits. If the multi reserve has a limited number of charges, then you reduce the cost even further - at least until you get powerful enough to cast more than 15 spells a day It still works the same way: you have your pre-genn'ed spells and all the player has to do is work out whether his reserve is big enough to hold the biggest spell he knows - the number of charges is the number of spells/day. Alternatively, if you want lots of little spells or fewer big ones, run the whole thing off an END reserve. One downside - a multipower with plenty of limits can actually give a *lot* of oomph for the points invested. Be especially wary of melee clerics who can "power-up" with spells like Bull's strength immediately prior to combat (though that's good advice in D20, too, so it's not out of genre - speaking as someone who - ahem - mostly plays melee-cleric themed chrcaters ) As for double dipping into sorcery/clerical magic, I'd make the player buy two seperate frameworks. That's not unreasonable, given that in the original source material apart from Cheese Golems like Favoured Soul/Sorceror/Mystic Theurge, you usually pay for that extra flexibility with a substantial loss of power. cheers, Mark

Re: Why must wolves be evil? Yeah, I always saw Gurgi as apelike/ramapitithicene too. And I must confess, since my players hadn't read the books, I shamelessly ripped both him and Flewddur Fflam off: they both made *great* NPCs - I didn't even modify them as I usually do "sourced" NPCs. I've never watched the movie - and that's intentional cheers, Mark

Re: Divide by Three Yep, I know - I own the rulebook. I've just never had anyone try to rapid fire sweep or haymaker a spell. Or a bow and arrow for that matter. Should magic bows include the limit "bow" in their costing? And if "spell" is a good limitation for spells in general, why restrict it to attack spells. That's a rhetorical question - obviously it was dumped in there without much thought and the proposed limitations wouldn't apply to anything else. It's not bad, or abusive or anything - it simply does nothing useful. Certainly in my game it wouldn't be limiting - not in 20 years of Hero system fantasy gaming has anyone tried to sweep a spell (or haymaker one). So I don't use it. cheers, Mark

Re: Bec De Corbin The word "Poll" to mean head is not recent - it is thought to come from Dutch "Pol" meaning top and since most Dutch words entered english in the Tudor period has probably been around for a while. The use of "Poll" meaning head as having anything to do with poleaxes *is* a recent confusion, the other derivations that I mentioned having been debated at some length (as noted, Shakespeare refers to a poleax in Hamlet although he writes it "polax" - though to be fair he also writes ice as "yce" in the same sentence ) - and as I noted, the evidence cited for "Poll" meaning head is a recent addition to the suggested derivation of the word poleaxe (from late victorian times - I'd regard that as "recent") refers specifically to slaughterhouse poleaxes which were spiked clubs used to bash the head. If you have an older reference, credit to you for producing it! It is of course, impossible to be sure, though of all the suggested derivations "head" makes the least sense - but derivation of words is a slippery business. Since you mentioned the OED, here's what they have to say on poleaxe:

Re: Magic depending on the country Rather than each country, each culture in my game has a different magic system (or systems). There are common features to magic, which every magic-user has to deal with, but different cultures get around them in different way. In the current game we have 7 different kingdoms, with a shared culture, and three different magic systems - one based on VPP, one based on MP and one based on buying spells as powers outside a framework. All have advantages and disadvantages. I think it gives a bit more flavour, but yes, it's a bit more work to set up cheers, Mark

Re: Divide by Three

Re: Interesting Aircraft: Dornier 335 Pfeil Cool! I actually saw this plane at the Deutches Museum in 1984, but I had no idea it was so advanced in terms of performance - I had gotten the idea from somewhere that it was one the many wacky ideas churned out in the dying days of the war. cheers, Mark

Re: Bec De Corbin I've rated Bec de Corbin as a 1.5d6K AP, STR Min 10, weight 5.0 kg, 2H, +1" stretching. I haven't bothered adding any modifiers for it, but the hook does mean that you can grab at things with it. As an aside, although the photo of the bec de corbin is accurate to real ones I have seen, I wouldn't place much faith in the text on that site - it's riddled with errors. The "viking halberd" resembles no viking weapon I have ever seen - and I've seen every large collection of viking weapons that there is. The weapon refered to in the sagas is called an "atgeir" in the sagas: roughly translated as "mail piercer". We know it had a pointy bit on the end, because various people get fatally stabbed with them and we know you could use it one handed, because various people do - and finally we know you could throw one - Grettir does so. We know it wasn't an ordinary spear - that's a spjót or a geir and we know it wasn't an axe - that's an øx. In Egils saga it is usually translated as halberd because Thorolf uses it two-handed but in the killing of Atli in Grettir's saga it is explicitly identified as a broad-bladed spear (When Thorbjorn runs him through Atli looks down and says, "Broad spears are in fashion these days" before dying - one of my favourite lines). The thing in the photo looks like a sort of bill (which was used by the Swedish Leidang in the middle ages, long after the viking age). Likewise the derivation of "poll axe/pole axe" is pretty dubious. People have been arguing about where the word came from for at least 300 years (because of Hamlet in the "fighting against Norway" passage). The short version is it could simply come from pole axe (meaning axehead on a pole, or long handle) or poll axe (an axe with a long handle used for polling, or cutting back tree branches) or a "bole axe" (meaning basically heavy or big axe) or finally it could just mean an axe with a single blade (the flat bit at the back of an axehead is called the poll). The suggestion it had anything to do with heads is a recent confusion from slaughter houses where poleaxes were used to kill cattle - hence the expression "poleaxed". Trouble is, plenty of those "poleaxes" still exist as do description of their use - and they usually don't have a blade - just a heavy head with a spike. OK, useless pedantry - but just a warning to regard any information from sites like that with some caution. cheers, Mark

Re: Divide by Three

Re: Divide by Three

Re: Divide by Three

Re: Divide by Three

Re: The price of power... I actually did this for a while in my FH game - spells got an extra limitation "requires mana" which meant that instead of END spells used BOD - with the note that you could use "just released" BOD or else your own. Evil spellcasters simply used sacrifices - slash and cast Good spellcasters either took the hit directly or used meditation (Aid) to boost their BOD Scores before casting or Heal to repair themselves after casting (though that's a slow process, since magical healing also costs mana ....) Bad Ass wizards simply used transfer to suck the mana out of their enemies and then converted it directly into spells. Mages of all sorts used a lot of spells with the "trigger" advantage so they could prepare spell sin advance when it was safer and let the spell rip with a gesture or a command word when needed. Th system did a lot of the things that I wanted - it made mages - even mages on your side - a bit scary, since everyone knew they got their magic from life-force and everyone looked at mages a bit sideways. It made magic something that required a good deal of forethought and preparation (like in Fantasy novels) and made combat magery relatively unappealing - although a mage could unleash some righteous whoopass, if he had time to prepare, he couldn't count on being able to do it all the time (also like in Fantasy novels) - so he needed backup in the form of rough men with pointy bits of metal. It also gave rise to some dramatic situations where a PC would open a vein for the team's mage to power that spell-we-absolutely-have-to-have-right-now. However, while I loved the flavour, in the end, it worked fine for NPCs, but I found it restricted magic just a little too much for PC mages who always wanted to be able to cast lots of spells. These days I use a similar system but using LTE *or* BOD. Since you can't release LTE very easily you can still use sacrifices to power spells via BOD, but a caster's own spellcasting uses LTE - he only starts to suffer injury (BOD) if he has used up all his END. That lets a caster recover faster from spellcasting and cast spells on the fly much more safely. cheers, Mark

Re: Order of the Stick Yes, but it's a parody where they take the d20 rules seriously. Like most d20 games, now that I think of it. cheers, Mark

Re: Ran my first FH session... some questions I'll echo the others - sounds like you are doing fine. I also primarily use multipowers for magic and that works fine (and has done for many, many years). As the characters develop, you will probably find that not all spells in a MP end at the same level, because in many cases, there are combos they use together and players can shave a point or two by not using multi-slots. In some magical systems, I further enforce that by requiring that all spells are ultra slots - in other words, you don't learn "variable effect fireball" but you learn "Vathek's Conflagration" - which has a specific non-variable effect (that makes it easy to avoid excesive min-maxing). For the high INT wizard, if you are not using skill rolls, it still makes sense since magical types often have lots of INT-based skills - cryptography to puzzle out ancient runes, KS: analyse magic, to figure out exactly what that magical scroll you found actually does, and so on. As far as points go, I usually start at 50+50. You can, as you have noted, build a pretty competent character for that and I have found that if you have two 150 point characters, one made fresh and the other made at 100 + 50 points of experience that the second has more breadth, due to skills, KS:'s and languages picked up in play. Last off, I don't bother with CV or damage caps, but (as noted in another recent thread) I don't allow stacking of normal equipment and powers, which stops things getting out of hand early on. As an aside, that means I don't allow Deadly Blow, which is *extremely* unbalancing - especially at lower levels. have fun! Cheers, Mark

Re: CEO skills, aeronautical design skills Probably not - a company usually has only one CEO - he sounds more like a divisional VP. As for skills, I'd say 2-3 PS's in the area where he works, including at least one in PS: manager, level depending on how skilled they are. Some executives are very knowledgeable in the field their division and/or company covers - others have a FAM at best - they have people/managerial skills instead and rely on staff for technical reports. A few CEO's have neither people skills nor background skills but got their position via connections. The list taken from Corporations is risible - I've met and work with a lot of CEO.s and few if any would meet that standard. None of them would have a public ID - only a tiny percentage of CEO's do: Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, etc. How many of you could identify Bill Ford (CEO of Ford, inc)? I've seen photos, but I doubt I could pick him out of a lineup and I pay more attention to this stuff than most peope I know. cheers, Mark

Re: wheel of time Like Wagner, then. cheers, Mark

Re: Divide by Three Yep, I based my response on the fact that 2 point levels can't be applied to DCV. Upping that to 3 point CSLs goes a long way to making the character survivable - tho' increasing the points available would also allow the mage to bump the power of his spells, so that area effect spells would be readily available - area effect entangles and flash spells are quite sufficient to take teh wind out of the sails of most high DCV characters. I didn't inquire as to his martial maneuvers since they don't affect his range DCV. Shrug. Does it matter if said wizard can pwn one of the King's champions one on one? I guess the answer must be yes. But that's missing the point. It's not to argue that I can malke l33t characters. It's just that if I can easily make a wizard who poses a severe challenge to an admittedly bad-ass fighter, then it's hard for me to see how the mage is somehow disadvantaged - even if he spends a minority of his spell power on non-combat magic, he can get significant utility outside combat, which the pure fighter can't match - so you get combat prowess and flexibility in one neat-o magical package. And since he'd presumably whack the archer in melee, that's fair enough, no? But would a fire mage with a variety of potent offensive spells be "a loop hole"? A blood mage who has a variety of body-affecting spells? These can be very potent combatants even against high DCV foes - and they are fun, interesting characters (and actually are both real characters in play).

Re: Divide by Three Actually VPP and multipower can both be very easy for players (I have mostly n00bs in my game too) if set up right. Basically in both cases, you provide the player with a pre-prepared list of spells to choose from or work with them and simply set the VPP (if used) to "Limited powers: only known spells" or make the multipower (if used) all ultra slots. In that case, it works *exactly* like "divide by 3" but with reduced potential for abuse and without a totally arbitrary distortion of costs - the player has a list of spells he can use. Most of them will be one at a time, so it's pretty easy - some smaller ones can be combined. I have a totally n00b player (never played *any* roleplaying game, let alone Hero) who's doing just fine with a VPP. I put the active cost beside his spells (which were all fixed) and told him "You can have any combination at one time that adds up to 30 or less". Since he had only a half dozen spells to start, he could easily deal with that. As his VPP got bigger and he learnt new spells, he could try more combinations - but he had the idea by then. cheers, Mark

Re: rules questions (Fantasy Hero) My rule is simple - attack from behind only counts if the person is for some reason unable to counter. So... attack from behind when the person doesn't know you are there - that works. Two attackers, one in front, one behind, that works too - you have to face one of them if you want to attack or efficiently defend (I guess you could turn side on to both of them and just try and dodge...) Even stabbing someone from behind who was unable to move because (for example) he had his arm stuck in something would work. Just running around the character won't work - pivot in place is essentially a free move. It's not like the character is frozen in time until his phase. cheers, Mark

Re: Divide by Three Rampaging ginsu of death he ain't. Those +5 2 point CSLs leave him with his DCV at base, which means he's gonna get clobbered pretty damn fast. And at range, where his HTH levels from martial arts won't help him, anyone with even +1 OCV will hit him most of the time. He comes up against the mage Joe Average the Not Particularly Gifted who has 33 points sunk into a spell MP with the fairly generic limitations of gesture, incantations and focus (wand) and a half dozen spells as ultras and 1 CSL with his MP, who's tossing 45 AP spells and he's basically toast anyone of a dozen ways before he slings his first sword. 4d6 Entangle? Toast. 3d6 E RKA? Probably toast. 9d6 EB. Toast 2d6 explosive E RKA? Probably toast and definately hurting. Ordinary old non-magical sword and invisibility? Probably toast Ordinary old non-magical sword and a 30 PD forcefield 0 End? Toast and not even a slight argument about it. 5" flight UaA at range? Toast. 4d6 Ego Blast? Toast 9d6 mind control? He might not be toast, but his nearest team-mate might well be. And so on. I haven't even spent 20 seconds trying to optimise this - and I'm playing in the fighter's own ballpark - taking down a foe directly. And a mage can do many, many things more than that. Given their flexibility, I think fighters 'should' have an edge in direct combat - otherwise what are they for? Personally, after playing and GM'ing FH for many many years, if mages in your games can't compete with fighters using the rules available, then your players have serious problems designing characters. Now to compete in combat, the simple example I gave can only have 6-10 ultra slots if he wants a few potent attack spells - but he's spent a whole 30 points on spells, fer Pete's sake. If he spends 50 points that gives him 11-20 spells -including some multi slots - at which point, unless the magic system has some limitations built in he's going to be enormously flexible AND powerful in combat. And this is acknowledging that MP are powerful and useful but still have some limit in that you can't use all of that power at once. "Divide by three" allows the purchase of spells at the same or even higher levels of power with NO limitation about combining them. VPPs give even more flexibility at the cost of slightly reduced power. Using the same fairly generic limits, 33 points don't work too well, but 36 points (only slightly more) allows a 30 point VPP - which allows 2 30 point and 1 15 point powers to be active at once. How's mr Ginsu of death going to cope with a flying invisible mage who is shooting 1d6 RKAs of firey death at him? Or who transmutes to stone (+20 PD/10 ED FF, +20 STR, 0END, 25% physical damage reduction) and just closes to hand to hand combat and kills him? Even with his martial arts and a two handed sword he's going to have hard time stunning the mage, but if the mage hits him back with a two handed sword, he's gonna be in a world of hurt. And unlike the mage he probably can't heal himself.... Basically the arguments in favour of this construct make no sense. If the argument is "You can't make powerful enough mages using the current rules" then the conclusion must be that MP or VPP are too weak: but that's hard to justify when a multipowered mage will almost always trash a fighter of similar points value unless magic is nerfed in some way. If the argument is that MP is *too* powerful, then it's hard to see why you'd want a construct that freely gives away even more power. It's got nothing to do with points either. Let's say you're playing a low point game - 25 plus 25. Take the "spell of the monstrous form" from the Grimoire, add Master's version and Many More Forms and then divide the real cost by three. Yay. For 16 points (a smidge under a third of your points), you can now shapechange into 128 different monsters up to 350 (IIRC) points in value. Just using the monsters from the Bestiary, as a basilisk you can sling an 8d6 RKA, as a troll you're massively strong, can see in the dark and regenerate, a variety of monsters give you flight, etc, etc, etc. What, exactly, is your min-maxed 50 point fighter going to offer by way of comparison (hell, even a 150 point fighter is going to be no match for that). Multipowers and VPPs may be powerful but they prevent the generation of monstrosities like that and using just the official, published spells and "divide by 3", I can make other equally noxious characters. Sure the GM can always say no, but why add an unneeded kludge, that more or less requires the GM to say no to many constructs? I'm not trying to be snarky and I'm not trying to put people down. But I honestly can't see a single reason why "divide by three" seems even remotely like a good idea. cheers, Mark