Markdoc

Re: Points or $ We discussed this in detail in an earlier thread, but the simple reason is that in most Fantasy games (unlike most Dark Champions games) there tends to be a number of unique items floating around. Also - unlike FH - most DC games are centered around a limited number of locales or feature an organisation that can supply gear at different places. So it's no big deal if a player swaps out his AK47 so he has enough points to lug a rocket launcher for one adventure. He can always get aother AK from somewhere for next week's adventure. But in Fantasy, you get this kind of situation: "Master Frodo, we've reached the Crack O' Doom, what did you do with the One ring?" "Oh, that? Bilbo gave me a neato-keen mail shirt and a sword, so I didn't have enough points to carry it. I think I left it in his bedroom." Basically, in DC games I can see the point of an points allowance to counter the obsessive hoarding of gadgets and equipment. It occasionally creates some odd reactions, but that's an acceptable price to pay for what can be a real problem. In an FH game where most characters have armour and a few weapons, and magic items can't be acquired by a trip to the store, it's essentially a non-problem (how many PCs have you had who wanted to carry 12 swords? In DC, on the other hand, players want a sidearm (or two) and an assault rifle and a rocket launcher and a knife, and a flamethrower and nightvision goggles, and bugging equipment and binoculars and an armoured van and different types of special ammo and..... you get the point) and the oddness occasioned is often much greater. Basically, I can't see any reason to worry about points: it's only an issue normally with magic items, and the GM generally controls access to those or requires players to pay points for them. If you don't want your players toting around neato-keen magic swords they didn't pay points for.... then don't give them away. cheers, Mark

Re: Points or $ Well, my approach is that *somebody* has to pay points to make magic or otherwise special stuff but such things are either charges (like potions - one shot items) or independant magical items. If a player wants to make potions, he needs to pay the points. Likewise if they want to make or have a magic item of their own, he/she pays the points. Found items are thus not a problem - for a start I give them out and for a second someone else has already provided the points. This eliminates any problems with finding and using items, and in fact, 20 suits of used chainmail make good loot - if you can find an armourer, or a merchant who knows one. They can be refashioned/refurbished much more easily than making a suit from scratch. But no-one's going to pay full price or even close, and Bob the Chandler isn't going to buy one. In such a situation, the players are not going to lug them any distance unless they are desperate for cash. In general, a good deal of the loot in my game is given out in "stuff". A gang of bandits is much more likely to have a whole bunch of stuff they stole from passers-by than a chest with 200 gold pieces and two gems. It's up to the players to sort out what's valuable and what's not and find a buyer for it. And most merchants in my game will take it for granted that anything they buy off a bunch of heavily armed, scarred strangers is stolen goods and will price it accordingly. As a result players will actually spend points on social interaction skills and things like KS: appraise value or PS: Bargaining Cheers, Mark

Re: Points or $

Re: Points or $ Well, metal sabots - intended for use mostly by mounted troops, but still on their feet while dismounted - were certainly worn in their thousands. Some of them have wooden or leather soles, but many of the real ones have metal soles. You can check them out in any decent museum. I agree, however, that wearing them when walking any distance would suck (but then that's true of full plate as well). In the interests of "fantasy" I've ignored that last bit, but I've always imagined fighter types as wearing boots and three-quarter armour like heavy troopers from the early age of pike and shot or halbardiers from slightly earlier. cheers, Mark

Re: Where do superpowers come from? Another possibility, not so far mentioned is to assume that "metapowers" have always existed, but are extremely rare. Anyone with a single metapower gene might display no sign of it at all or have only very weak powers (this was the background for my occasional superhero game) In the bad ol' days, the chances of two people with the metapower gene or genes meeting and having babies was extremely low - if the gene is "one in a million" then 100 years ago there would have been about 80 positives in the US. Their chances of meeting and having babies would be infinitesimal. Today there'd be nearly 300: statisically the chance of at least two meeting and getting together randomly is still pretty damn low - but it's nearly an order of magnitude higher than it was a century ago, even without taking other factors into account. This is especially so since since people with odd powers would often have hidden them for fear of being branded a witch, and babies born that looked extremely odd would have often been drowned or exposed at birth. However, with the rise in population, global travel, global media and more openness, unusual babies get to survive, and people with powers automatically get to know about other people with powers. It'd be natural enough that at the very least they'd get together socially - Batman hangs with Wonder Woman, not the guys from the office, after all - and in the real world, movie stars behave like this: some of them marry regular folks but most socialise with and reproduce with people from the same background. That *dramatically* increases your chances of getting new supers, and explains their sudden appearance in numbers, but allows you to retcon some old ones in the background when you need it. It also prevents "Marvelisation" - where every block gets its own superhero. Powers will still be rare, so you don't have to alter the whole background - if we're talking at most, low hundreds of superheroes on a global plan - and most of them relatively recent arrivals - then the world would look pretty much like it does today. It also allows you to have covert evil gene-screening and forced breeding programs to produce at the very least low-powered supers and doesn't require aliens lurking about in the background messing with folks (although you could have them as well if you want). cheers, Mark

Re: Points or $

Re: Points or $ Actually, points = money is the most arbitary price structure I can imagine: gosh, you can buy a feudal estate complete with servants, for the price of a long bow. What's with that? I use a price list adapted for my game world from real life renaissance/medieval lists: there are a number of these linked off the FH boards. cheers, Mark

Re: Points or $ We've had this discussion before. I started my FH campaign using the "points for everything" approach and dropped it after a while. It simply gets too wierd, when players start throwing away perfectly good stuff because they "don't have points for it" - or even wierder, don't take useful equipment with them on long trips for the same reason ("gee, if I take an extra 20 arrows, I have to leave my armour behind - hey kid, want a suit of armour?".) And as far as I can see, the argument FOR charging points - that fighters get all of this stuff for free and poor ol' magic-users don't - doesn't hold much water when you realise the GM has step in with careful game design to stop magic users trampling all over fighters in combat: witness the current thread on "how can fighters compete with magic users?". It is perfectly possible to run a game where the accumulation of "stuff" is not an issue - I did a 2 year FH story arc where that happened. But it's easier (and infinately more rational) to do it as a GM, not build in a hokey game mechanism. cheers, Mark

Re: Licensing Question Yep. My experience has been that Hero (and now DoJ) are very supportive of fan sites. That means no posting anything lifted directly out of DoJ publications (which is kind of a no-brainer) but all the stuff you generate *using* the rules is fair game. I've had my own "game site" with NPCs, setting info, the woiks, as they say up for years now, including pdf downloads for GMs to use offline. The feedback has been very positive - literally hundreds of emails and tens of thousands of hits. It's a way of giving something back to the community. cheers, Mark

Re: Penalty Skill Levels for noncombat skills? That's just sloppy GM'ing. I almost always give bonuses for simple tasks, plus bonuses for appropriate tools, extra time, etc. It's not unusual for me to say (for example) when a player fils a KS or PS skill roll something like "You can't quite figure it out now - maybe if you went back to the lab/office" that gives players an incentive to actually HAVE a lab or an office - and to spend money/time on getting cool stuff to stick in it. Of course I also levy penalties for doing stuff like defusing the bomb while in the back of a car weaving at high speed through traffic while people are shooting at you... On the other hand, tasks that are routine, I don't require a roll. To take the airplane example, for someone with piloting: Routine landing on a regular strip in good weather: No roll Routine landing on a regular strip in bad weather: Roll, but at a bonus Routine landing on a regular strip in really bad weather: Roll Crash landing on a regular strip in good weather: Roll Crash landing in a wheatfeld with one engine on fire and one wing shredded: Roll at big minus etc, etc. cheers, Mark

Re: Does wearing armor need a skill ? For cultures where shields are common (ie: most "quasi-medieval european" settings) shield use is subsumed into "common melee weapons". For a seting where it isn't common (feudal Japan, or post-renaissance Europe, say) it isn't and has to be bought as a 1 pt familiarity. For armour, see all the "armor penalties" threads. I don't require a FAM as such but do institute penalties on CVs, certain skills and PER, which increase as the bulk of the armour increases. I allow people to buy some of these off with PSLs - but not all. An experienced fighter who is used to his armour won't, for example have CV penalties any more, but he'll always have the PER penalties: experience can never fully compensate for the restricted vision inherent in wearing a full face helm, for example. cheers, Mark

Re: Valdorian Age Agreed. I looked at Turakian age and thought "Naff. YADADKO". But I'm popping down to Fantask on Friday to get a copy of Valdorian Age. cheers, Mark

Re: Coin Spell Since once you lose your OAF, you can't use the power anymore, that doesn't sound right - even if someone swipes you coins you can always get more. I'd suggest restrainable (that covers someone swiping the coins out of the air) and use consumable focus (easily replaced), to reflect the fact that you need to use silver coins, but that silver coins are pretty easy to come by in most cases. cheers, Mark

Re: Point/Power levels in your game I've run a LOT of FH (by far my favourit genre). I tend to start at 50+50, but no points caps: there are always restrictions on what is avaialable in terms of skills, magic, etc. What those are depends on the setting. These games tend to be low fantasy where players need to use their brains and good sword arm is usually the best counter-argument. Over time, in this setting, some players have gotten into the 300-400 points level though, which makes them truly heroic. I have also run "high fantasy" starting at 150+100 points, with relatively few limitations: these were "legendary" types. Both types of game are fun and both ran without any problems. You need a different style of play, though, for each. 50+50 characters are not really suited for "prevent the Evil Dark Lord from conquering all the lands" games while 150+100 pointers are not really suited for "find out who's killing all the village's livestock" cheers, Mark

Re: Magic System for Critical Review Very nice! I like it. The required KS's should keep the spell casters in check, to a large extent. I can just see Thomas Jefferson corresponding with his learned friends in Paris over the precise details of his experiments to cross-breed a horse and an alligator to get a steed suitable for use along the edges of the Potomac.... One possibility (going to some extent with the Alvin Maker thing) is to differentiate what you called craft magics from Natural Philosophy by requiring folk magicians to buy their spells staright (ie: not in a VPP). That would reflect the fact that a gentleman magician works within an intellectual construct with defined rules and that he can take advantage of a body of literature built up over time. It takes longer to learn, but can do more. This is reflected by all the skills you have to buy, and the initial cost of investing in the VPP. In contrast, Granny Fawkes can teach you to charm warts. It doesn't cost much time (points) to learn - but that's all she can do. Folk magicians would have only a few spells/charms, but it wouldn't cost them much for those few. On the other hand, it would cost far too much for them to master a lot of spells - so they *would* only have a few. Cheers, Mark

Re: Protection from Divination? All of these would work - you'd need to target clairsentience as the sense group and detect as well. They would give different effects. As an example, someone is trying to scry a mage who is in his laboratory, casting a spell he does not want anyone to know about. So he casts a protection spell against scrying. Images would let him try to fool the scryer. Instead of him in his lab, they see an empty lab, or him innocently playing with a kitten, or whatever he chooses. Invisibility would let them see his lab - but not him. Darkness would block the scrying - the scryer could not see anything, but they'd know something was up, because they'd be blinded. Cheers, Mark

Re: Reasonable Construction Times Sorry to resurrect an od topic, but there seem to be some pretty wild misconceptions running about, so it might be worth addressing... OK, first off, weapons (specifically, swords). There's two ways to make a sword. If you are starting from scratch, you need to smelt and purify your ore (normally a weaponsmith would not do this, but would buy stock already prepared). In the feudal era, though, stock wasn't always available. I've watched this being done at Gammel Lejre, here in Denmark, using only period tools. To prepare enough stock from ore, will take about 4-5 person-days, IF the person knows what he is doing. Once you have your stock, the two ways to make the weapon are: 1. simply melt your stock, pour it into a sword-shaped mould and once it has cooled, grind the edges, and add a handle. Total time, about 6 hours. Swords made this way are cheap, and show it. They break and bend relatively easily, but we know (because the moulds remain) that Feudal era smiths in Scandanavia, the UK, and Northern Germany made them this way. It was used all over to make axes and spear heads, which are far harder to bend, which is is why these weapons were so much cheaper than swords. 2. Heat (but do not melt) your stock and beat it to shape, with hammers. This process normally also included tempering (exposing the metal to flames made with different amounts of charcoal during firing to incorporate or remove carbon. Normally the stock would be beaten out and reheated multiple times during this process. Some cultures used blades made from a single piece of stock, and provided cutting edges and a flexible core by heating and reheating, beating out (and removing carbon, to give steel) then folding the metal back on itself many times then reintroducing carbon to the thinner cutting edges as the last phase. This is the secret behind the famous Toledo steel, but individual pieces made this way have been found all over Europe, so the process was reasonably widely known. A quicker method is to beat your stock into a core and fire it with low charcoal to make a steel core, then fuse it with edges prepared seperately in a high charcoal firing (pattern welding). To make sword using refolding could take anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months for an armourer and several assistants depending on their tools, the quality of the metal, how anal the smith was about quality, and so on. Making a pattern-welded blade would take about one third to one quarter of the time. Note that this is the time to make a serviceable blade for combat - polishing, engraving and embellishing could easily more than double the time. Likewise armour can be made two ways: blacksmithing and whitesmithing. Blacksmithing is similar in some ways to the cheap way of making swords (though there's no melting). Instead, you heat a sheet of metal precut to shape in a big forge and then use a roller or a maul to beat it to shape, using a form. This is fast (using period tools, about 4-5 days for a smith and several assistants to make a full suit of plate). It has the same weakness though as fast, cheap swords - the metal is stressed during pressing out and the armourer has no control over metal structure. So the piece may have defects and is prone to cracking. Also in this process, you don't spend a lot of time working the edges, so the armour will be weaker (no reinforcing), wear faster and it may crack, given a good hit. However, armour was made this way - the big armouries of Italy and Austria (particularly at Graz) churned out munition plate armours by the thousand, every year, through the high medieval period. Contrary to what was stated, plate armour does NOT have to be fitted to the individual. Munition plate was made to basic forms. Whitesmithing, in contrast, uses graduated tempering, similar to what was described above - the metal is heated in a limited area in a small forge, and worked with a hammer multiple times - much of the basic shaping is done without heating at all, which is of course much more labour intensive. In addition, multiple firings are required. However, the advantage is that the metal can be precisely controlled - a flexible steel core and a hardened, less flexible surface makes the armour far more durable. I have to admit we don't actually know how long this process took. Modern armourers, using period techniques can make a full suit of plate in a few weeks (one smith, several assistants) but fluting, rolling the edges and so on can easily double that time (or much more!). Also modern armourers have access to much more consistent metal so time spent on firing is probably reduced. Still, if you said a month, you probably would not be far off. Again, embossing, gilding, engraving and so on, would greatly increase that time. That's why royal armours could take months to make! Cheers, Mark

Re: Unreal Tournament HERO? We used to do this routinely, every sunday afternoon for a couple of years (it was called PW, short for personalised warfare). The GM sat in one room with a wargames table set up. Players come into the room, indicate where they want to start, the GM jots it down on a map and then you simply take it from there, phase by phase, calling players into the room as they see someone or get a chance to act. Sometimes we had as many as 14 people going at once! I fondly remember the one time, 5 players all decided to start in top of the church tower... On phase 12, it vaporised cheers, Mark

Re: Ultimate Grimoire... One letter at a time... Hey, go right ahead, it's meant to be an aid for hero gamers. But I don't have a copy of HD so I can't help out cheers, Mark

Re: Stun Problem in Fantasy Hero (Double it) I've never had problems with STUN in FH for 4 reasons. 1. I use the hit location chart 2. I'm relatively restrictive about armour as a GM. My players (and by fair play, my NPCs) don't generally go wandering around town in anything more warlike than a stout leather jerkin or a concealed chain vest. 3. I'm not, on the other hand, restrictive about levels, which as noted, leads to a much more tactical style of combat, with blocks and dodges being very important. If you have an OCV of 14, hitting "mook level" opponents in their unarmoured face is quite feasible and very often leaves a dying foe, not an unconscious one 4. I play NPCs a bit more "realistically". My players don't go around offing their unconscious but living foes after a fight because those foes don't spring to the feet when they regain consciousness and shout "Those guys juts kicked the crap out of us, so now lets's attack again while we're all badly wounded and half of us are dying!" Mostly people, who have been beaten unconscious, moan, stagger to their feet and run away to nurse their injuries. Honestly, I find FH lethal enough as it is! I LIKE the option of beating the PCs unconscious rather than killing them. cheers, Mark

Re: Special virgin powers? Well, back on topic Extra running (cannot exceed pursuer's speed, -1). She can't outrun the baddy, but likewise he can't catch her unless she ends up in a dead end Extra STR (only for escape, -1). Even the chief bad guy has difficulty keeping hold of her and tying her up is only 50% likley to succeed at best Luck. Of course. Extra resistant PD/ED, doesn't stop 1st BOD from damage (-1/4). She can get beaten up, but survives with only cosmetic bleeding HA (only for surprise attack). She can whack out even the tough guard from behind, but is no match for him in a straight fight and can makethebig bad flinch, if she gets the drop on him. Instant change (any clothes, only to clean up, -2) Whatever she's wearing might get tatty or ripped to reveal a bit of flesh, but the naughty bits always stay covered and the worst they can get is "grubby"

Re: Bony Jaws! Rather than invisibility, I would give it levels in concealment. That combined with its existing mental defence would make it hard to spot. Danger sense won't help you find it - merely tell you just before it attacks. It would also explain why people can see it easily, or pick it up on sonar, but be unable to see it with "detect giant spiky fish", which seems a bit odd. cheers,Mark

Re: Str Minimum For Armor Woo! Nice outfit! But it makes the point very well - no matter how used you are to armour, while you might be able to move very well in it, you will NEVER be able to move as flexibly as you could without it. This is why the Knights of Malta used to train in double weight armour - so that in normal weight armour, they would be faster and able to react better. Of course, the same applies - with NO armour they would be faster still... cheers, Mark

Re: Str Minimum For Armor But leather armours are also thick and bulky (comparatively speaking) compared to metal and can't readily be articulated, making them relatively clumsy. Every armour type has some plusses and minuses (leather armour is also almost useless against thrusting weapons with a thin cross section, but almost as good as plate armour against bludgeoning weapons, etc etc). If you want a more detailed armour system, it should be possible to work one out with Hero system. I wouldn't be against someone designing such a system, but though I have played around with it, for my own use, I opted for simplicity over accurate design, since the simple system promoted the behaviour I wanted. cheers, Mark

Re: Str Minimum For Armor This is what I used to do. I found the natural outcome was that everybody was STR 20 and heavily armoured. I should have seenthat coming Hence, the non-negotiable penalty! cheers, Mark