Markdoc

Re: Is Find Weakness mispriced? Yep - as I noted, I have seen it cause real problems too. Not frequently enough for me to ban it, but enough that I look REEEEEAL close at any PC build that has it. The problem is, as you state, reducing defences to 1/8th or less. That's compounded when the attack being used is a killing attack - you give up a few phases, during which you are on the offensive, but after that, every attack does significant body - icky! cheers, Mark

Re: Herophile Fantasy art OK, since the thread has come back to life, here's one I did this evening. cheers, Mark

Re: OIHID vs Multiform?

Re: CSLs overpriced? Fair enough - I did the math already and I agree all it does is alter the tming, not way the points are spent. However, since as you note, if the player chooses to get both DEX and SPD, it works out the same, where you see no reason to *forbid* a post-creation sell-back, I see no reason to *allow* it. cheers, Mark

Re: CSLs overpriced? That's allowable - but of course it gives you no fractional SPD if you ever want to buy it up cheers, Mark

Re: New Disadvantage: Past. I've always used hunted (at the harshly punish level) like this: to me it simply means that there is someone out there who really doesn't like you and wants to do you ill: not that they are necessarily physically chasing you around (although it could be that, too). So it covers - for example - the obsessive stalker ex, who freaks out your current romantic interest and sends nasty letters to reporters making up shady deals so you look dishonest. The newspaper editor who just hates your guts for some reason and is always trying to get photos that cast your character in a bad light. The noble who feels you slighted him and is always whispering about you at court, or the guy you owe a really, really big favour to and who calls you up for "jobs" - or he'll spill what he knows to the cops, or... It doesn't have to be petty spite - such a character might actually *want* you dead but simply lacks the resources to make it happen - so they do what they can to plague you. Then when a hunted pops up, it simply means one of these schemes has borne fruit of some kind. Actually, I'd rather a player have several of these sorts of hunted than one larger hunted of the type where (for example) the king wants your head on a pike for seducing his wife and youngest daughter simultaneously. The latter is far harder to work into a game on a regular basis. cheers, Mark

Re: CSLs overpriced? I don't think that's a house rule. I believe that normally you can only sell characteristics back at character creation or with GM's permission. Certainly I don't allow it But even so, as the next poster to you pointed out, 8 point levels are still kind of unattractive simply because the 10 point level is a whole 2 points more expensive, but is generally applicable in far more situations. cheers, Mark

Re: CSLs overpriced? In general, it is fair to say that the 8 point CSL is not a great buy under most circumstances. You're better off with DEX or 10 point levels. For the others, it works out about right, since: the 2 pointer is just dirt cheap and useful the 3 pointer is even better - not only is it more flexible than DEX in terms of OCV/DCV but you can start adding it towards damage the 5 pointer is slightly less cost-effective than the 3, but also slightly broader in application. It otherwise has the same advantages That's not to say DEX is a BAD buy - just that it's not as overwhelming as it looks at first. cheers, Mark

Re: Is Find Weakness mispriced?

Re: Magical House Locks Is it just me, or is this getting way over the top? A GM can (and should) assign difficulties for picking a lock defined on its level of sophistication - I generally (if it's a special lock) make it skill vs skill (lockpicker versus locksmith). I'd simply allow PS: Magical locksmith. You can make magical locks. The GM can easily decide that magical locks are impossible to pick with normal tool, or give a -5, or, if he wants to cost things out, allow the skill to be bought up with (for example) a -1 limitation versus non-magical lockpicks. (I'd give -1 since it sounds like the limitation is well known, and I figure PC thieves will rapidly try to acquire magical tools) So: PS: magical locksmith 12 - (2 pts, assuming an INT of at least 13) 17- vs non-magical lockpicks (+5 points for 7 total). Levels with general magic could presumably be applied as well. Note, the GM doesn't actually need to know who the locksmith was - he just needs to assign a difficulty, exactly as he would for any normal lock. cheers, Mark

Re: What is awesome? Damn! You're right! I should have gotten some extra points

Re: Is Find Weakness mispriced?

Re: What is awsome?

Re: Best and Worst Costume/Appearance Changes

Re: Class systems -- is there no escape?

Re: Class systems -- is there no escape?

Re: Character for suggestions As for the IPE armour, I know you don't have to buy it like that - but I did so because to players, the fact that a character or NPC apparently has no armour, but soaks up enormous damage freaks them out. That way the character appears to be taking arrows through the head, or a sword to the guts and just has a non-bleeding wound or something similar. You can chop bits off them and it doesn't stop them! As for the stun aspect, you may have a point: but recall that there is nothing stopping the character acquiring further protection. In my game I don't allow free equipment to stack, but the character could easily acquire magical protection, or even purchase combat luck. cheers, Mark

Re: Character for suggestions Ooh, great spells - consider them stolen. As for the character, there's no real background at this point - as I noted a friend of mine and fellow GM was blanking on character ideas, so this was jus a mish-mash of thoughts thrown together in a few minutes while I was drinking coffee at work. The picture was equally just thrown together that evening for fun. However ..... I do have use for such an NPC myself, later in my current game. The basic plotline so far (here: http://herogame.dans.cust.servlets.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39573, although I need to update it with recent adventures) has gotten the players set on the idea that all Samadrian cultists are capital E-Evil . At a later stage of the adventures, I want to introduce them to the idea that although Samadrian Cult magic is extremely dangerous to use, it's not necessarily evil, by introducing a helpful and somewhat sympathetic cultist, who also needs their help. What better than a partially-dead necromancer, who wants a cure for her condition? Of course, to survive initial encounters with the players, such a NPC will need to be extremely resilient! Hence the combat bias in the basic design. I had planned to build up the spell list later on (to include healing magic, as well) so ... thanks! As for the cult of the Bloody Goddess, that was entirely made up now, but I liked the name, so it's going to be added to the list. Basically the setup in the culture being used for the current game is that all magic is cult/religion-based. Over the centuries, the established church (which has 12 gods, all of whom have specific areas of magical competence) has 'homogenised' the faith and learned to avoid dangerous magical practices. Each of the gods/goddesses has their own cults who teach a specific sort of magic. So church magic is safe to use, but also somewhat limited. Recently, however, new cults have been springing up. They are usually based around a specific aspect of one of the gods or goddesses, and offer a more powerful (but also dangerous to use) form of magic, which often warps the user in unpleasant ways, if they are not very careful. They also much more routinely contact avatars of the gods (others say demons) than established religion does - opening such doors can be hazardous. The cult of the Bloody Goddess is a heretical variant of the official cult of the Woman of Tides: a goddess of the sea and of secrets: as might be expected, this variant cult is focused on controlling the "internal sea" and in addition to the cult spells, I envisage them also having cult secrets (basically powers that initiates can acquire) related to blood/body control. cheers, Mark

Re: Bleeding Mounts for Food

Re: Bleeding Mounts for Food Couple of points. To get enough nutrition out of blood just to survive on, you need to drink a fairish amount (say 300 mls - or a biggish cup). Even a horse will collapse if you tap it like that every day for more than a week or two (for a human to completely replace that much blood loss takes about a week or more, depending on your diet. This is strictly an emergency measure, although as Brian noted, if you have a string of horses, you could go quite a while like this - especially if you butchered and ate one, once you had tapped it out. That'd be last resort stuff though. The Masai do this with cattle, as noted, but usually have 20-30 head, so you rotate them, tapping each one for blood perhaps once a month. You can keep that up indefinately, especially since they don't normally drink blood every day - it's used to supplement milk (they normally mix the blood with the milk, which makes a more palatable drink - relatively speaking of course). Remember of course that cattle give lots more milk than horses, so what works for them wouldn't normally work even with a string of horses - like I say, there it's more of an emergency thing. Last of all, you don't - whatever you do - cut into muscle. That'd lame your animal for little benefit. You cut instead into a small vein or artery near the surface (usually on the neck, but occasionally on the legs). I've never seen Masai do it, but I have watched Boruna (a related, nore northerly tribe) do it. A narrow, deep cut will bleed quite freely into a gourd or cup and can then be sealed with a plug of chewed, astringent resin from treebark, which stops the bleeding and helps prevent infection. cheers, Mark

Re: Help me stat this "sword"

Re: "Beware the generosity of Kings" - A warning

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Yeah - I have often thought that the setting would make a *great* setting for gaming as well. Basically there's room for anthing the GM wants, you can reuse classic myths, you can use time travel and there is the possibility for players to *realise* what myth they are in and attempt to warp it their own way. There's a lot of inbuilt depth Nothing much to write about new SF/F books - I've mostly been reading history books the last few months. cheers, Mark

Hi Guys, here's a character for suggestions/comments. There's no background per se, since this was made up for a fellow GM who wanted " a female, half-dead necromancer". For appearance, see the picture below which should make the disadvantages obvious. As for the powers they seem straightforward enough - the character is pretty hard to kill, being essentially dead already. The Invisible advantage on her armour is to disguise its effect - as far as attackers can see, thir weapons don't bounce off: they are slicing bits off and doing damage - it's just largely irrelevant. For the spells, the descriptions are: History of blood: Causes the target's old wounds to slowly open, one by one so that they slowly bleed to death Inhabit the Blood - allows the magus to actually flow through a wound and inhabit the victim's bloodstream. She can't do anything while she is inside, but it's a nifty way to travel... Detect Blood - self explanatory: she can sense the presence of blood and tell quite a lot about it even in total darkness. Taint Blood - allows her to give the victim a disease, which makes him nauseous (thus clumsy and prone to failing Con rolls, etc) Blood of the Living - again, simple enough - allows her to regenerate injury by drinking blood from someone/thing else. I didn't add it, but it might be nice to add the limitation that she can gain no more body than the victim has body. Reverse Blood Flow - allows her to send blood backwards in the veins, hurting, but not injuring the victim (yes, I know in real life that'd kill you, but it's magic, OK?) Spray of blood - causes all open wounds in the area of effect to spray a fine mist of blood out, creating a red haze, which the necromancer can imbibe and gain energy from. It might be better to make this BOD, I dunno... Val Char Cost Pts. Roll 13 STR 2 6 12- 14 DEX 3 12 12- 10 CON 2 0 11- 10 BODY 2 0 11- 18 INT 1 8 13- 11 EGO 2 2 11- 15 PRE 1 5 12- 1 COM 1/2 -5 9- 6 PD 1 3 4 ED 1 2 3 SPD 10 6 5 REC 2 0 20 END 1/2 0 22 STUN 1 0 Total Characteristics Cost: 39 Cost Skill Roll 2 FAM: common melee weapons 17 Power skill: Magic of the Bleeding Goddess 25- 1 Literacy 3 KS: Anatomy 13- 3 KS: Graveyards and tombs 13- 3 Stealth 12- 2 KS: Cult of the Bleeding Goddess 11- Cost Power 10 Undead Flesh 4 PD, 2 ED armour, totally invisible (+1), doesn't stop first body of each attack (-1/4) 8 Undead Flesh Life support (doesn't eat, sleep or age) 20 Undead Flesh 50% Damage reduction vs PD, resistant, only Stun (-1/2) 27 Magic of the Bleeding Goddess 75 point magic multipower, Concentration, 1/2 DCV (-1/4), Extra time, full phase (-1/2), Requires Mana (-1/4), requires a skill roll (-1/2), Side Effect (-1/4). 2 (u) History of blood 1d6 RKA, NND (+1 defence is never being injured, or wearing a blessed token) does body (+1), Reduced END (1/2 END, +1/4), Continuous (+1) 1 (u) Inhabit the Blood Desolidification (affected by body-affecting magic), reduced END (0 END, +1/2) PLUS 1 level of shrinking, reduced END (0 END, +1/2), only to enter victim's body (-1), requires a wound (-1/4), costs END to cast (-1/4) 1 (u) Detect Blood Detect (analyse) Blood at range, targetting 2 (u) Taint Blood Drain DEX and CON (2d6), two characteristics simultaneously (+1/2), Delayed return, 5 points per day (+1 1/4) 2 (u) Blood of the Living Healing 6d6, requires blood to drink from a living creature (-1) 3 (u) Reverse Blood Flow 4d6 NND (defence is not having a normal circulation or or wearing a blessed token, +1) 2 (u) Spray of blood Transfer END (2d6), Area affect radius (+1), Delayed return 5 points per day (+1 1/4), requires a wound (-1/4) DISADVANTAGES Cost Disadvantage 10 Physical limit: (Sunlight is painful: -3 to all rolls in sunlight) 20 Distinctive features - looks and smells dead (concealable with major effort, causes extreme reaction) 15 Psych Lim: Fascinated by sorcery (very common, strong) 10 Social limitation : member of the cult of the Bloody Goddess (frequently, major) 15 Hunted by Church Militant, 8- (MoPo, NCI, limited area - not in Samadria) Characteristics Cost Base Points 39 50 Power/Equipment Cost Disadvantages Points 65 70 Skills/Perks/etc Cost Experience Spent 31 15 Total Cost: 135

Re: Least Abused Powers