Markdoc

Re: Str Minimum For Armor

Re: How to Simulate the Black Company magic system? Two answers: #1. Simple version. Use a VPP with "only known powers" and "skill roll to change" and the size of the VPP based on magnitude. Simple and also covers the blending of spells as "linked" powers #2. More complex. Still based on VPP, but much more affordable - see my Ruequest sorcery conversion. http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Runequest/heroquest.htm With a little tweaking, it should give you exactly what you want. cheers, Mark

Re: Trojan Armor Question Panoply actually simply means fancy display stuff: so armour with gold widgets,, extra defences, etc. Certainly the strange and impractical stuff the Trojan leaders wore in the film would qualify... Armour on the forearm = Vambrace Armour on the shin = Greave. Not just to protect your shin when running with a hoplon (big-ass bronze-reinforced shield) but also (and more importantly) to protect your shin when it was sticking out under that big-ass shield. Shin injuries are a very, very common - and often fatal - injury among lightly armoured troops from the ancient through medieval era, judging by skeletons. Hoplites sometimes (apparently) wore a greave only on the forward (left) leg. The armour work by the trojans in the movie has no name, per se, because it was made up. For that matter, the Greek armour (while not made up) didn't exist at that time - almost all of it is drawn from the much later "classical" greek era. I'm not dodging the question though - in the earlier period helenistic soldiers wore a thing called a linothorax (literally a "linen body") which was almost certainly quilted/padded armour. There's been a debate droning on for decades about whether this was augmented with metal plates, based on findings of a king's armour from an early iron-age tomb. I'll spare you the specifics, but if this really was used (and judging from paintings, it was), then you get something like the armour from the movie. I'd call it "scale" armour in roleplayer's terminology. cheers, Mark

Re: High Cost Package Deals... I wouldn't have a problem with it. Frankly, I have difficulty imagining one of my players being willing to stump up 50 points for total life support, but the character is not overpowering: the steam engine is too small - the character will run out steam (so to speak) fairly frequently. If you increase the END reserve, and take the points spent on life support into account, the character is almost certain to be weaker, slower and less-skilled than his companions. Taking combat luck into account, he's not necessarily even going to be tougher. So: Not unbalanced Kind of a neat concept, if you have a sort of steam-punky fantasy game world. cheers, Mark

Re: Racial Package Deals GM: "Why should your fighter get neato-kewl powers for free?" Player (in whiny voice) "But I have pointy ears..." Kind of sums it up, really. Cheers, Mark

Re: DEX is used too much Well, if you set a cap on CV - to take the example given - then it makes DEX far more cost effective, since DEX gives bonuses to all sorts of things. In contrast, although they only apply to a limited subset of things, the prime advantage of levels is that they are cheap. But if CV is capped at 10 (say), then the fact that you can buy 6 levels in OCV for 12 points is pretty irrelevant - odds are, you'll never be allowed them. You'd be better off buying 4 points of DEX instead. So the problem is essentially "Yeah, I changed the rules to make DEX really cost-effective and now people are buying lots of DEX!" My response is "Well, what did you expect?" It's not just DEX - you can change the Hero system lots of ways, but like any system, you have to be aware that changing something also changes everything connected to it. cheers, Mark

Re: Roman Martial Art, comments please Actually, what distinguished Roman soldiers and barbarians was not their relentless training because they got anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. What distinguished them was better equipment (armour, swords that didn't bend), discipline (Roman soldiers could take high losses and still stay in the fight, whereas their barbarian opponents often lost heart and started to run away if things looked dodgy), combined arms (the footsloggers were backed up by cavalry and archers, and artillery where needed, which often took the edge off their opponents' attacks), better organisation (they very often had better information on their enemies' whereabouts than the enemy had of them, meaning they could choose a battle ground that favoured them) and most important of all they had quartermasters, meaning that they could stay in the field more or less indefinately with a line of supply whereas their enemies would start to starve after only a short time in the field. Vegetius's book Epitoma Rei Militarii outlines legionary training in detail. He makes it very plain that the prime targets of training were (in order) the ability to run fast carrying a heavy load, the ability to stay together in groups, physical fitness, discipline and (#5 and last) skill at arms. Recruits practiced running long distances carrying bags of rocks and also did weightlighting, running and jumping in the greek style. Weapons training was done with double weight weapons (to build up strength) but most of it appears to have been simple tactics practiced against a wooden stake and it seems to have recieved roughly the same amount of time as carpentry and construction training. Oh, and they got training in reading and writing, if they were illiterate - legionaires were required to be literate. The Romans were tough buggers, no doubt about it, but it is very plain - to use your own comparison - that compared to fencing, roman weapons training was crude, simple and relatively fast. It worked, though! Cheers, Mark

Re: Str Minimum For Armor I'd make a couple of changes. First off, you have plate mail (which is a mixture of plate and chain) and then you plate and chain as a seperate entry. Then you have full plate (by which I guess you mean articulated plate, without the chain). I'd just collapse the lot down into plate and chain (7 points) and articulated plate (8 pts). I also just set a flat penalty for armour. This is not to reflect weight so much - armour is distributed, so weight is less important than if you were carrying the lot on your back. It's more to do with how much the armour restricts your movement (and all armour does - if it wasn't bulky or hard it wouldn't be protective). The penalty is light /medium/heavy and is -1/-2/-3. This penalty applies to CV, and all DEX related skills, it also applies to PER rolls if your head is covered and to your REC. Even a big strong guy will get tired faster in hot, confining armour. I work out what constitutes each category of armour by giving 3 points to each category, in other words, DEF 1-3 is light, DEF 4-6 is medium and DEF 7+ is heavy. This is modified by coverage. A breastplate is DEF 8, but only covers your torso and shoulders (about 30% of your hit locations), so it is effectively Def 8/3 = DEF 3 for a -1 penalty. Add a helmet or greaves and it becomes medium. And so on. I allow people to buy Penalty skill levels to offset the CV penalties, so a guy who is experienced in using armour is not greatly hampered by it in combat, but you can't buy PSL to offset the other penalties. That means that armour is good - but not ideal for sneaky missions or times when you are going to be moving around a lot. I find it encourages players to wear lighter armour most of the time, but gear up for straight battles - which is exactly what I want. cheers, Mark

Re: Roman Martial Art, comments please As far as it goes, it looks fine. I'd agree totally that I can't see any justification for a roman army martial art - from what little we know, their training consisted of a little weapons training, a fair bit of lifting heavy things training, some digging training and mostly marching in straight lines in response to signals training. Everything else you were expected to pick up as you went along. Roman Gladiators (at least from the imperial era) on the other hand, probably could qualify for martial arts. Just my two bits.... cheers, Mark

Re: D & D Diatribe Nani? i always played dual-classed humans if I had the stat.s to qualify. As noted before, the way the experience point system worked, you could essentially get a butt-load of levels for the price of your next level. That made them hyper-excellent value. It was especially good for spellcasters to pick up some hit-pointy type levels, but paladin/monk dual class also kicked major butt (combines fighty stuff and sneaky stuff and - best of all - takes no damage from spells/breath weapons, etc on a successful save, with excellent saves AND a saving throw bonus...) Ahem. OK, I admit, munchkin land, but still..... cheers, Mark

Re: Non-combat Magic items with plot hooks The Totally Findibulous Coin. A simple silver coin, though not from any realm the players will ever have heard of. It has a smiling woman's head on one side and an open hand on the other. It radiates strong magic (and chaos, if that's a feature of your game) to those who can detect such things. Power: 6d6 luck, usable once per day (-2), independant, OAF (-3), side effect (-1, 6d6 unluck), activate 11-, (-1), gestures (flip coin, -1/4). The coin - if taken out and flipped - grants the owner incredible luck. But only if it comes up with the smiling face of fortune uppermost (11- chance). If the open hand comes up, the coin-tosser must "pay up" - he gets hit with unluck instead. The coin was gifted to Rhadamas, priest of the Laughing God, by a power or powers unknown - presumably one of the powers that serve that most enimatic deity. He used it to become rich, and take the six dancer/assassins made for the Archmage Assamas by the Minglers of the Blood in a famous wager, before suffering a most gruesome fate. Since then it has passed through many hands. Plot use: it can be offered as found treasure, as a reward (just leave the downside out, and it sounds very desirable!). Even more amusing slip it to a PC in a handful of loose change and throw in a desperate gambler who wants it back.... GM's note: why a player would want this, is beyond me. If I found it I'd sell it! But they like having it anyway.... cheers, Mark

Re: D & D Diatribe

Re: Different Kinda Dark Magic Not quite true - good mages could regain power via ritual scarring or burnt offerings. they'd just be at a disadvantage compared to mages of a more... ah.. flexible ... morality. Which actually soounds pretty cool. There would be a continual temptation to slide over the "dark side" and the "distrust of magic" which is built into many campaigns without any good reason at all, would be well justified here.. cheers, Mark

Re: Hey kids! Would that be the classic Issac Asimov story "The Nine Billion Names of God." written by Arthur C. Clarke? Cheers, Mark

Re: DEX is used too much That's why I DON'T have a cap on CV (and probably why I have never had a problem with DEX). I must admit to limited sympathy for GMs that change some important aspects of the system and then complain that the system no longer works properly. cheers, Mark

Re: Robbers on the Road And this is why we're having this discussion. If there's no realistic chance of getting captured or running away, then every fight has a binary outcome. Either the players loot the bodies of everyone they encounter or their bodies get looted instead. That, uh, limits the GM's story-telling possibilities a little. What if Shakespeare had been a D&D player? Romeo meets Juliet and falls violently in love. Romeo kills Tybalt in a fight and takes his stuff. His father tries to send him Mantua but Romeo refuses to run away, so the Capulets attack him, kill him and take his stuff. Hamlet's father is killed by his Uncle Claudius who takes his stuff (including his wife, this time). Hamlet learns the cause of his father's death from his father's ghost and fearing to be captured, attacks Claudius. They both die and Gertrude gets their stuff. King Lear divides his stuff between his three daughters. The youngest daughter Cordelia refuses to suck up to him, so Lear attempts to throw her out. She attacks and kills him and is afterwards killed by the two other daughters who keep all the stuff. In a subplot, Gloucester attempts to disinherit his son Edgar who kills both him and his brother Edmund and keeps their stuff. I was going to convert the Merry Wives of Windsor, but on second thoughts, it wouldn't make a great D&D scenario..... cheers, Mark

Re: New Crobuzon to HERO Both the collected Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (two big-ass fat volumes) and the collected First Chronicles of Amber have been re-released in the fantasy masterworks series. I brought the F&GM series last year and I'm on the lookout for another copy for Mike already. cheers, Mark Linkage here: http://www.mykreeve.net/books/fantasy/fantasy_masterworks.htm

Re: Robbers on the Road I think if you want to rely on history, you'll need to do a bit of reading up - bandits did - historically - do many things: you even allude to this yourself. Bandits most certainly preyed on merchants (as well as anybody else). After all, you rob the people with stuff worth stealing. Since many bandits were - as you noted - unemployed soldiers, they can be well-equipped and led (the successful ones generally were). After the hundred Years war ended France and Burgundy were plagued with roving gangs of bandits many of whom had been professional soldiers, but others of whom were simply peasants that had lost everything. Not only did they rob merchants (so that goods started to travel only in heavily guarded convoys), but they fought off local lord's armies, sacked castles and forced towns and villages to pay ransom or be looted and destroyed. They ddin't worry about fences - they took what they wanted for their own use, or goods that could easily be sold. In Japan, even the fearsome samurai were often unable to dislodge bandits from mountainous areas. The Machi-gumi (forerunners of the Yakuza) even set up their own toll gates in some places forcing travelling merchants to pay a fee or be robbed (and then sometimes robbed them anyway). When the emperor travelled to Ise in 1449, his courtiers paid off the bandit chietains in areas he would pass through, since the local armies were not strong enough to ensure his safety. There are lots of other examples, but bandits can range all the way from some guy with spear hiding behind a tree, to a collection of gangs under a nominal leader, that number in the tens of thousands. The Old Man of the Mountain was a bandit leader (with a profitable sideline in assassinations) who primarily preyed on overland trade between the Med. and India. In your own country, Erik Thorvaldssen supported himself by banditry after he was exiled from Iceland, while Rollo Gangeren was such a successful bandit in France (preying on merchant ships as well as overland transport) that the king eventually made a treaty with him and he became a duke... cheers, Mark

Re: D & D Diatribe To some extent that's true - however, to me, using the excuse that with a little work you can wreck any system to excuse a system with gaping holes *built in* simply excuses poor design. As noted, I play (and enjoy) d20 - but that doesn't prevent me (or vice versa) from recognizing that the designers emphasised production values over game design. cheers, Mark

Re: D & D Diatribe Yes - 3rd Ed. D&D or d20 (same thing) levels for all classes cost the same and you multiclass by levels: so if you pick up levels in other classes, you'll always be that number of levels behind (though as noted, it's usually worth it to to take one or two levels (but no more) of something else before becoming an arcane spellcaster. In every other variant of D&D, however, the difference in experience points required per level means that multiclassed or two-classed characters inevitably end up 1 level behind single-classed characters. Not that this is terribly relevant for a Hero board, except as an example of broken system design. cheers, Mark

Re: D & D Diatribe

Re: Arabian Nights Nani? Tekumel has got nothing to do with Arabian nights: it's more Aztec/precolumbian-inspired. OTOH, it's a truly great setting, with a devoted and slightly cultish fan base, which generates a ton o' useful stuff. cheers, Mark

Re: D & D Diatribe Oh I know exactly what you mean, Fitz - I'm off to play D20 tonight and I expect it to be as much fun as previous sessions. We have a good group and it's nothing to take too seriously. I expect it will eventually end in tears - I enjoy mutilating character concepts too much and D20 makes it too easy (for example, last week "I'll hide by the riverbank til the orcs run past. As they run past, I get an attack of opportunity right? Good. I'll go into a Rage and use my clerical special power of strength. I have combat reflexes, so that's 4 attacks with greatsword at Strength 23..."). I can barely wait to get to third level! But when I'm running a game, d20 is simply too restrictive: it requires rewiring parts of my brain I don't want to mess with just to run a halfway logical game. cheers, Mark

Re: "Fantasy" withoiut Magic

Re: D & D Diatribe