Markdoc

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use?

Re: What are your average Skill Rolls and what modifiers do you use? Wow! I didn't realise I was such an amazing surgeon! I've done scores of surgeries (including organ transplants) and hardly any of the animals I worked on died. (2, I think, out of a bit less than a hundred). Who knew you could get a 29- roll in surgery with only a couple of weeks training? Seriously, I think this is way, way over the top. I've managed just fine for years with 16- being considered an awesome level of skill. cheers, Mark

Re: What to do with your stuff... Your players obviously haven't seen Boorman's Excalibur then! cheers, Mark

Re: Dr. Grordborts Infallible Aether Oscillators I know at least one guy from Pixar* (strangely enough, he's a New Zealander too. Why didn't the guidance counsellor at High Scool tell me about this stuff?) and I'd say the guys at Weta have a better job. cheers, Mark * My old C&S GM - he was first at ILM, then Pixar, then he had his own firm and now he's a freelancer. He did the little greebly green guys in Toy Story

Re: Dr. Grordborts Infallible Aether Oscillators Sigh. Is it just me, or do those guys have the best job in the world? cheers, Mark

Re: And off we go! The players inspected the temple before leaving the Village of the Worm, and Khatz spotted a mosaic of a knight fighting a giant worm just like the one they had just “killed”. In the background of the picture was a comet - such a thing hasn't been seen in the skies for decades. Unfortunately the players realized they hadn't killed their worm good enough, because faint sounds of movement were heard coming from its death-site, and when they investigated, the huge body had slithered away towards the river and vanished. They argued about whether to chase it and finish it off, but instead added it to their growing “to do” list and got the hell out of there. All that day they climbed up out of the river valley along the overgrown road, seeing nothing of interest, apart from the occasional qurrock track from the Samadrians ahead of them. In the late afternoon, they came above the tree-line and approached the crest of the hills, and Lamoniak and Gen went ahead to scout. In the forested valley on the far side of the highest ridge they could see a plume of smoke, and further up the ridge, a grey stone building rather like an inn, built against a rocky outcrop. On the way back down Gen was attacked by a giant snake (about python-sized), but both got away mostly unharmed. So Aquila went to investigate the stone building. There was only a bad-tempered old priestess inside, praying for a dead peasant. From her comments the players assumed that the Samadrians had killed him (in fact, it was a lone adventurer who is travelling the same road – they players know he is there, but have assumed it is Sir Baharach). The bad-tempered priestess had nothing against them staying the night, so they did, and tried to keep out of her way. All through the previous day, Kelsan's tentacle-holes had been getting infected, or poisoned, or both, and by this evening he was very ill with fever. So Gen ground up one of the (rapidly softening) storm apples in a cup of herb tea and forced it down him. They kept watch, and in the last watch (Gen's) Khelsan's fever broke (he hadn’t been able to sleep well), and he woke up in time to see the priestess bewitching Gen, hissing 'Murderers! Husband-slayers! You armigers are all the same!’ Then she bit Gen with her poisonous fangs, started turning herself into a giant snake, and all hell broke loose. Several of the players, tired by their long day’s walk, slept peacefully through the first couple of phases of screaming and combat (PER rolls of 16 and 17!) Once awake everyone attacked the snake-priestess, but she fought back and slithered up into the rafters where she lashed her tail around and did them considerable damage. She also spat sticky webs, and glued Gen to the floor. Khatz and Bellona climbed up after the snake, and after a mighty battle, Khatz spitted it to a beam with his sword through its mouth as it attempted to bite him. At which point it gradually turned back into a spitted old priestess, pinned to the beam with a sword through her head. The characters all collapsed to the floor and inspected their injuries. Gen recovered from poisoning after a few minutes; Khatz had been more severely bitten but he recovered in a few hours. It was now getting light but raining heavily, so they decided to stay there the whole day. Khelsan took the bodies of the priestess and her husband outside, beheaded them, and cast the heads and bodies down the mountainside in opposite directions. Later in the day Gen and Aquila hunted and brought back a pair of partridges for a stew. That night was peaceful. They left early the next morning and made as good time as they could down through the forested valley after the Samadrians. There were tracks to tiny villages after a while, traces of woodsmoke on the air, and they met two woodcutters. Khatz did his best to terrify them, before deciding that they were, after all, only woodcutters, and Khelsan traded them their loads of carving wood for a bag of salt. Before nightfall they reached the village of Doorn; about 100 houses and a tower abandoned by the lord when traffic on the road to the cursed village dried up. They bought fresh supplies and Khelsan traded salt for cloth. That evening their colourful tales of adventure were the number one attraction at the brewer's house, and they slept the night in the abandoned tower - peacefully. (Not without checking it out carefully first, though). The next day, they headed for the high mountains and evening has crossed the crest. On the other side they could see the north coast of Ostragya, off in the distance the peak of the Bald Man of Lossach and immediately in front of them a deep ravine crossed by a bridge. On the other side, an armoured man was waiting, with drawn sword…. cheers, Mark

Re: Converting I tend to go for flavour rather than attempting to model directly, with the emphasis on adhering to Hero rules rather than the rules I draw from. For example, I've converted Mike Surbrook's list of D&D feats to pure Hero system for our game since the "prerequisites" are purely a D&D metasystem bit. You have a prereq, since in D&D, a feat is a feat is a feat - since they all "cost" the same, it prevents you taking the best feat immediately. In Hero system, you pay points - if you want a crunchier feat, you pay more points. cheers, Mark

Re: What to do with your stuff...

Re: Homeric Hero I don't know about the Dan Simmons series, but there's no particular reason that the mythical Achilles should be built on a huge number of points. He has mad l33t fighting skillz - but depending on where you set your baseline for a normal warrior, that doesn't require a huge number of points (especially when you consider that his opponents were often fighting naked. Doesn't take a huge attack to kill a guy whose 13's are hanging out in the open for all to see...) He has invulnerability with one weak spot - but the fact that he actually had to fight at all, and that he wore armour, suggests that we're talking "really tough" rather than superman-style "bounces attacks off his chest". Basically we are talking about a high level form of combat luck, by the sound of it. He has his mom as a valuable contact. And .... well, that's basically it. He was tutored by Chiron, so it's possible he knew some cool stuff and he had neato armour made by Hephaistos, but it doesn't seem to have done anything spectacular by itself - it was given to somebody else after he died and they promptly disappeared into obscurity. But you're right - it would make a great setting for a game. cheers, Mark

Re: Weapon poisons: show me what you use On the topic of poisons, in game I tend to go "realistic". Prior to the modern era there were very few poisons that you could use as weapons - the things that were poisonous tended to taste really bad and be organic (so they don't last long). So there's not much in the way of blade venom available. The exception is "magical alchemical stuff" but that's not available for purchase, generally: it has to be paid for with points, in which case it is up to the player as to how it is built. For magical critters or assassin types who do have poison, it can be lethal (killing attack), convulsive (usually defined as DEX and STR drain), hallucinatory (mental illusions) or paralysing (I usually do this as SPD drain rather than entangle) or blinding (flash or darkness: only affects target). Poisons with long-term effects might use transform. Most of these either have gradual effect, or they have a low number of DC and continuous, uncontrollable. So for example, a poison that will kill over a period of days might be 1d6 HKA, continuous, uncontrollable, NND (life support:immunity), does body, extra time: 1 day, STR doesn't add, 6 charges. In that case, the poison would do 1d6 24 hours after the first exposure and another 5d6 at the rate of 1d6 per day. That'd kill your normal person in a week, unless he got some healing. It'd make even a big tough guy pretty sick. The alternate build is simply 6d6 HKA NND (life support:immunity), does body, STR doesn't add, Gradual effect (1 week), which has some advantages in use (once it's used, the damage is done: it can't be dispelled, unlike the first power), but is much more expensive. cheers, Mark

Re: Weapon poisons: show me what you use

Re: Elves I'd add a recommend for this book. IMO it's head and shoulders above everything else Poul Anderson wrote - and amusingly enough, he said in an interview that if he could, it would the only book of his he'd heavily rewrite I've filched heavily from it for my game. Having said that, though, the idea that elves have bodily immortality but not souls, is an old one, going back at least a couple of centuries in English folklore. There was a tradition that if an elf (specifically, a færie bride, but presumably applying to other elves as well) was baptised, she gained a soul, but also became mortal. cheers, Mark

Re: What to do with your stuff...

Re: I have 4th Ed, do I need 5th immediately? I'd just chime in to back up the others - wait for 5th Ed revised FH and get MM&M if you are a completist, otherwise, relax: I find it the weakest and least useful of the fantasy supplements so far. cheers, Mark

Re: Hit Locations for Melee (particularly Fantasy/Mediaeval) combat Way. We have quite a lot of medieval corpses from battle graves and injuries to the arm and lower leg are by far the commonest. It's not because they are easier to hit per se, but because when you are hitting at someone, your hand and arm are necessarily out where someone can cut at them, while the lower leg is both exposed below the shield and also hard to retract fast enough to avoid a low cut. Head cuts aren't uncommon (especially on unarmoured troops), but both head and torso were usually protected by both the best armour and also by a shield and a person's best efforts. Hence a predominance of leg and arm wounds is relatively realistic. I guess, however, that if you wanted more accuracy, then a seperate missile and melee hit location chart would be the way to go, like RQ. Cheers, Mark

Re: HP Lovecraft movies

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be I simply treat vehicle (and building) damage on an area basis. Thus firing a hand-held weapon inside an aircraft carrier might make a hole in an internal bulkhead. OK, so now you have a hole in an internal bulkhead. So? It might cause some grief to the squabby on the other side of the wall, but it has more or less exactly zero meaning with regard to the integrity of the ship. To actually damage it you are going to need to go and fire at something useful (preferably the captain, but I guess the cooling lines for the reactor might do if you had enough ammo and time). If you had a 8d6 Explosive RKA missile, then you end up with much bigger holes in multiple bulkheads - that might mean something if you also make a hole in the hull.... cheers, Mark

Re: Rarity of Magic? This is kind of how things work in the current setting I am running, except instead of vilages, it's cults. There's one religion, that most people worship, with 12 gods. Each god has their own sphere(s) and grants spells in those and has priests that are particularly dedicated to one particular god. These priests are the basis of individual cults, so a small village temple might only have one priest. He'll keep the place clean and offer sacrifices to all 12 gods, but he will only have magic from his patron and so the village only has one cult - and only one kind of magic. In addition such an isolated cult probably won't have many cult secrets (spells, in other words). They won't have access to everything the god can grant. A big temple in a large city might have have *more* than 12 cults, since a few gods might have subcults and the larger cults will have access to many spells, which they teach to initiates. cheers, Mark

Re: What are _____ like in your game? Yep. And Three Hearts and Three Lions was specifically cited by Gygax for inspiration. If you want D and D specific monsters look for bizarre things like the Beholder and Otyugh. cheers, Mark

Re: AIs, automatons, etc. as PCs Multiform sounds like the way to go, with perhaps some limitations to cover transfer between forms. In one you're a base Whether the base has robot followers or not depends on how much function they have without his input. If they just sit around waiting to have his consciousness transferred in, then you pay nothing. In this form you could well sell back plenty of characteristics In another form he's a robot - with a base But in neither of these forms is he technically an AI - he's just a character whose consciousness happens to be digital. Simple, straightforward, etc cheers, Mark

Re: Elves Fixed it for ya. cheers, Mark

Re: What are _____ like in your game?

Re: Elves

Re: TA: Wizards and Armor