Markdoc

Re: Fighting talk

Re: Fighting talk Both points have been mentioned. Spending less than 15-20 points nets you a big fat bonus. Spending more than 20-25 points nets you bupkiss (or pretty near). The solutions are, as far as I can work out... to problem number #1). Well, there isn't really one apart from insisting that everyone who wants MA buy at least 20 points, which is a bit harsh. To problem #2) Don't spend more than 20-25 points on MA. Assume that variations on the same maneuver are covered by "special effects". Yes, I know, neither situation is entirely satisfactory. Since I have an unhealthy fixation with martial artist characters, I made up my own system, which has served me well, lo, these many years. http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/martialarts.html cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Is "Way Station" a suitable addition for a superhero campaign?

Re: Is "Way Station" a suitable addition for a superhero campaign?

Re: Defining Magic Go with side effect. You can even have a variable side effect, so that when a summoning goes wrong you: a) get what you were asking for, but it's in a really bad mood. Any competent summoner should be up for this one. get something you weren't asking for. Possibly something much larger and nastier than you were asking for. Can you buy "Grovel" as a PS? c) you tear a rift in time and space through which ravening demons pour - quick, grab the shotgun! d) You get ... well, something... The caster starts to rub his hands together and chuckle in an unsettling way. His friends notice he has suddenly acquired slit pupils. Maybe it'll wear off? e) instead of bringing something to you, you end up going to it - along with a chunk of floor and the people who were standing on it. f) etc, etc. remember as long as the side effect is defined as variable, there is a lower limit to the active points invoked, but no actual upper limit. While I would not recommend wanton cruelty to players, being inventive is just fine. cheers, Mark

Re: combat luck and armor........ Regardless of the etymology of the word stacking (which I also use to refer to piling books) I don't allow combat luck to stack with natural armour. The in-game rationale is simple enough: Armour gives you protection, though being able to deflect (or even stop) blows. Combat luck gives the ability to dodge the worst of the blows. If you take a hit where your armour's defence is relevant then by definition it hit solidly - so your combat luck was obviously on the fritz. Armour doesn't *cancel* combat luck - so you get the better of whichever applies, but you don't get both. Game mechanism rationale: allowing combat luck to stack with armour stiffs the light fighter and raises balance issues. Eventually *all* of your fighters will want as much combat armour as they can buy, and when players can have rDEF 12 or more, a rapier isn't going to cut it. Stacking encourages an arms race - heavier armour, larger weapons. I speak from experience here - not just from my own games, but from friends' as well. We've been using combat luck for many years and players soon learn there is nothing more important than rDEF, when almost every foe will have a killing attack. If combat luck stacks, then there is no real choice between "light fighter and heavy fighter" - both will want as much combat luck as they can get, because there is no penalty for using armour. In practical terms, the heavy fighter actually benefits from it *more* since he gets a critical multiplier advantage, which mean he not only sheds practically all BOD damage, but also significantly reduces his chance of being stunned (because almost all weaponry acts on multipler of 2-12 BOD, there's a fairly broad middle ground where an rDEF+STUN of 12 or more significantly reduces your chance of being stunned). Thirdly, there's a game design issue here. In a heroic game, ordinary weapon and armour are free - so the argument "they paid for it, it can stack" holds zero water for me. They *didn't* pay for it. And it doesn't stack - at least not in my game. This also holds true for weapons (actually, it holds true for all "real-world" equipment). So Deadly Blow, and all of the constructs based around naked advantages don't fly in my game. It is quite possible (and in fact, it's common) for fighters to have "Deadly blow" or "Flurry of blows" signature attacks, but they build the powers straight, with the weapon as a focus (if they want), not a freebie add-on. So if a player *wants* to pay for armour and combat luck, then yes, they can stack. Otherwise, no: no more that two sets of real armour stack or two real shortswords act the same as a real two-handed sword. cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Door opened in an airplane in flight. What next?

Re: A question of getting into Fantasy Hero GM(s) and Player(s)

Re: What to do with your stuff...

Re: Door opened in an airplane in flight. What next? And in a totally irrelevant piece of trivia, I actually met a woman who was on United Airlines Flight 811 which suffered a similar fate, except that several passengers went out the hole to their doom. She was sitting on the opposite side of the aisle from the hole and guy next to her - who had no seatbelt on - went out the hole! That'd shake your confidence in flying, I think. cheers, Mark

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help It is. The earliest cannons were known of were made of wood (no, I'm *not* kidding) and iron. Iron's lighter and harder but also more brittle. It was harder to cast (early iron cannons were made of metal slats heat-welded together). Trouble is, being more brittle, they had a tendency to blow up (this was countered by adding banding or making the walls of the barrel thicker, but that made them even heavier.) Hence bronze. Heavier, but easier to cast and bore out, and since it was readier to deform, slightly less prone to going off like a giant bomb. cheers, Mark

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Well, initially it was dynamic - but then, the armour got heavier over time and the fighting became more "massed ranks". But that still meant plenty of activity - at Platea the hoplites did a half mile charge in full gear at the run and still had energy to fight at the end. Up north here we have equally heavy, impractical looking shields and as far as we can tell, they never advanced much past the "run at each other in huge masses" style of fighting, so that would also require plenty of wild swinging. In both cases, I go for the "muscly little bastiches" option myself. cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Assumptions within HERO Strange. Given most the assumptions aired here, I can clearly no longer assume that my assumptions about the rules bear much similarity to my own - almost none of the assumptions listed here would be valid in my games, or in most of those I have played in. cheers, Mark

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help On the topic, here's a nice pic of a reconstruction of the Dendra panopoly, which is as accurate as possible: it apparently weighs 55 pounds. or about the same weight as a 15th century suit of full plate (like this puppy) No question about who'd win a fight.... cheers, Mark

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Yeah, I figured: muscular little bastiches, the lot of them. That's kind of the point really - saying "it was too heavy" doesn't really figure. The shields (and armour) were astoundingly heavy - but they used them anyway. As an aside, what most people haven't figured out is that most real-life bronze armour is not significantly less protective than iron. You'd have to be Hercules to drive a blade through a typical hoplite's cuirass. The real point is to get that level of protection, the armour had to be thick (and it was - just look at the suckers) which means it was as heavy as all hell. With iron you could get the same level of protection, or even slightly more, for a great deal less weight. Same with steel - as the quality got better, the armour got *thinner*. If maxing protection out was the point, you wouldn't have seen that (and in jousting armour where maxing protection out was the point, you *didn't* see that). They already had PGP - what they were trying to do as metallurgy was improved was make it more user-friendly. cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic? This is one of the talking points in the "Empire #1" from my game I mentioned above - frequently posed questions include "How do we *know* the gods exist? What's the difference between a God and a really powerful mage? Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from divine power, etc etc". That's why lots of taverns there have signs posted saying "No religious arguments" cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic?

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Heh - I wasn't saying there *wasn't* resistance - we know there was (although historians quibble over how much, where, how long, etc) I cited the Tasmanian war because it was the largest (and as far as I know, only organised) resistance, amounting to a full-fledged guerilla war. Trouble is, sharpened wood and stones versus firearms ended in a rapid, decisive and absolute victory for the gun-owners, with the few surviving aborigines carted off to die on Flinders Island. Contrast that to events over the ditch, where the Maori were able to battle the British to a truce - because they *also* had guns. They still lost the war, but they were able to salvage something out of it. So it was the idea that the aborigines were able to hold the settlers off (even for a little while) that I was objecting to, not the idea that they tried. cheers, Mark

Re: Making a Swarm Effective Agreed. One of the limitations of "real armour" is that things can get in/under it. That said, different swarms do different things. A swarm of rats might be gross, but they probably could not harm somone in a full plate harness: the gaps are not big enough to get in through (unless it's the kind with an open groin). But bees could. Imagine a helmet full of bees - you couldn't hit them without opening your helmet or taking it off Having a wasp up your nose and stinging repeatedly can't be much fun either. Or having flies cram themselves up your nostrils or down your throat. Basically, get creative: NND, darkness, small RKA where the armour isn't. All of these things are fair game. cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic? Agreed. The whole "armed = polite" thing makes a nice soundbite, but nothing else. It is interesting, though to think about how societies in-game would deal with "magical firepower". Agreed - here's the kicker for me. What about "immunity to aging" and "Immunity to disease"? Real-life rulers spent fortunes on chasing these. If they could be purchased - even if it cost a fortune - people would want it. What happens to a society when the rulers (or even just plain wealthy people) can - in theory - stay in place for generations? What happens to rules of inheritance, one of the defining features of premodern societies? Or to the concept of "life after death"? (Other than "I'd rather not find out"). How many points is a 1200 year old warrior built on? Again, answering those questions has shaped the societies. In Empire #1, the question of inheritance is largely meaningless. Daddy can leave his stuff equally to all his children (which could be anywhere from 1 to 100 of them), or to somebody else entirely. A child is *expected* to go out and earn his own way in the world. As one result, people have a stronger attachment to the extended family and the clan, than the immediate family. The son of the clan leader can't expect to grow up and inherit Daddy's (or Mummy's) position, but their parent *is* expected to provide them with a living (usually a position in the business, or if that's not possible, something to get them started in the world). If Mummy and Daddy can't afford it, your uncle, or the family's patron should. Mummy and Daddy are also expected to watch their back verrrry carefully, in the upper echelons of society: after waiting 200 years, Junior might be getting a tad impatient to step up in the heirarchy - though if he's good, he might be able to do so *without* them unexpectedly falling backwards onto a salad fork . Society - especially at the upper levels - is cultured, secretive and seething with intrigue, but also relatively open to newcomers and socially mobile. Ability is more important than lineage and age (though without ability you won't live to any great age...). If being the oldest son of a wealthy and powerful family doesn't guarantee succession to same, the prestige associated with lineage is diminished. Boasting of your family's ancient lineage cuts less ice when there is someone in the room who remembers your founding father as a wee tadger. In empire #2, however the only way to get magical protection and magical longevity is to belong to the temple - because only they have mages, natch. But to join the temple, you have to give the Temple all your stuff (meaning it accumulates more and more all the time). Thus the Temple *is* to all extents and purposes, both the government and the army. But since it's men-only, it's never acquired the role of a nobility: it's something you join, not something you're from. In this power structure, you can politic your way to the top. So by posing questions and seeking answers to the same "magic" questions I ended up with two different societies. This was by design. Empire #1 is the "adventurer-friendly" society, where highly-skilled combatants are valued (if they are not complete loonies, and occasionally even if they are) and bright young things can rise in the world, if they are cunning, careful and lucky. Empire #2 is the "bad guy" empire as far as most players are concerned. They're not "evil" per se, they don't have giant demon-rape ceremonies or anything, but they are rigid, humorless, structured and definitely not down with the idea of armed strangers wandering from town to town. cheers, Mark