Markdoc

Not actually true. Both British and French (and indeed, all European armies of the period) stood on the defence and performed slow advance in line, to maximise firepower. Also both employed columns for rapid advance (as indeed did all major European armies). This is just practical - it's far easier to get 30 guys running or jogging in a line, than 200. The only difference in battle orders between British and French armies was a French deployment for the advance called l'ordre mixte, which included both columns and line. It was rarely used, as far as we can tell, with French battalions forming up in either line or column, just like their British foes. The difference was purely one of tactics. The British army of the time was smaller than its continental opponent, but famous for the amount of range practice required and resulting firepower. A british regiment of line was reckoned to put out 2-4x the firepower of most opposing forces. Not surprisingly, British tactical doctrine emphasised defence and slow advance tactics, to maximise their strengths. In contrast, the French army were faced with fighting on multiple fronts against numerically superior foes. Their tactical doctrine thus favoured a swift close, and breaking the enemy and not surprisingly emphasised speed and concentration of force. So it's true that the column was used more by the French. But it's not true that it was their primary formation or used because it looked impressive. It was used because it was the fastest way to get into bayonet range, which is where their regular troops excelled. In Hero system, you can get the effect of formations simply by applying common sense: close order means that each soldier is protected (in the sense that nobody can get get around/behind them) by the ones either side. That way, you ensure each soldier only has to fight one foe, and you put your best guys in the front. Open order allows you to use cover and move through obstructions easier, but doesn't work well against close order because they can put 2 or 3 guys onto each one of yours. A phalanx - with appropriate weapons - lets the guys in the middle ranks fight too, albeit at a penalty. A line maximises firepower and the area you can protect, but is vulnerable to being broken through: kill 3 guys in a line 3 deep and you're through. A column charging 20 deep is likely to achieve that, if it is supported, simply due to local weight of numbers. And you don't want guys behind you in Hero system combat any more than you do in real life. So there is nothing magical about formations: they're simply a question of local tactical placement. You don't really need to make up bonuses to make historical formations provide the same advantages or disadvantages that they did in real life. Morale on the other hand is important and has not been specifically addressed. But again, I simply use regular Hero system rules. Any time things look a bit dodgy, I simply allow attackers to make a PRE attack (unit to unit). In the NPC generators, I usually give veteran warriors PRE boosts for this reason. So, a Veteran guard unit (PRE 15) gets 3d6 base, plus a d6 for reputation, giving them a 4d6 base "morale'". By itself, that's not going to do much, but once you start stacking battlefield modifiers (violent actions, inspiring leaders, foes in retreat, superior combat prowess/equipment etc) you can easily push this into 8-10 d6 territory, which is enough that opposing units start to degrade quickly. Even ignoring other effects, EGO+10 means that units can only take half actions in the next phase, and act after attackers, EGO+20 means they lose an action. Both of those are huge combat disadvantages - and most soldiers who percieve that they are at a disadvantage will retreat, or (more usually) run. Heroes like the PCs gain an additional battlefield role by being able to boost morale with inspiring speeches or actions. Cheers, Mark

Agreed - in melee combat, no more than 6 - fewer if they cannot completely surround the PC. I more or less took that for given : ) Cheers, Mark

I'm at work right now (coffee break!) so don't have access to my stuff, but I have used a simple home-brewed mass combat system for years, which would seem to answer your problem. It goes like this: First, use the 3d6 probablity curve to calculate the chance to hit, exactly as you do for a single character. So if you need 11- to hit, you have a 62.5% chance to hit. If you need an 8-, you have a 25.9% chance to hit. Second – for mooks or other mass combatants – simply calculate number of attacks, and multiply them by the percent chance. You don’t actually roll. So, 20 mooks shooting at the PC, needing an 8- to hit: 20 x .26 = 5 hits on average. Just roll 5 hits. Now, I don’t bother to calculate all this on the fly. Instead, I made a simple table (Edit - now available in downloads at : http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/207-mook-hit/) You can read the table as “roll needed to hit”, going down and “Number of attacks” going across. So 20 mooks needing an 8- to hit, you just choose the “8-“ row and read across to “20” attackers – you can see that 5 hits are listed. You can use this for any number simply by adding the “Number of attacks, so if the PCs kill 5 of the mooks who were attacking and there are 15 left, you read across to the “5” column (1 hit) and the “10” column (3 hits) for 4 hits in total. This has the advantage that it is simply using the Hero system rules so you can apply all mod.s (cover, distance, dodges, prone, whatever) directly. It’s just OCV vs DCV, exactly as usual. If the 20 mooks (OCV 4) are attacking Thongor the Mighty (DCV6) and Greycat the Sneaky (DCV9) you simply read off 10 attackers at 9- for Throngor (4 hits) and 10 attackers at 6- for Greycat (1 hit). The rolling for damage (and hit locations if you use them) adds enough randomness to the system, and to the players the fact that you are using a table is entirely invisible: to them, it feels like they are playing regular combat, and the number of hits they take can be modified by their own actions exactly as normal. If Thongor is taking too many hits he can dodge, move around combat levels, etc. to adjust his DCV, etc and he’ll get exactly the benefit he should. Likewise, if something affects the mooks – positively or negatively, that also has the effect it should . For autofire attacks, all the mooks get 1 attack at their normal OCV, and then 1 (or more ) at -2, -4, etc. You can also use this system for NPCs vs NPC – for example big fights where the PCs are leading a group of soldiers against the enemy, for example: I don’t actually roll all those dice – this gives me a quick readout of how fast people on both sides are falling. The number of rolls you have to make as a GM is quite manageable: I’ve used this system to put the PCs in epic battles, where they are facing off against whole companies of soldiers and got the whole lot done in an evening. For those who like to look behind the curtain, obviously, since this is calculated off the normal Hero probability curve, the odds of success are close to what you’d expect if you actually rolled every attack. Close, but not exactly the same. To make the table quick and easy, I have only used whole figures (no 2.5 hits, etc) That means that the odds of hitting are slightly higher than they would be, because of rounding. The difference is small, and since mooks die in droves, that’s not actuallyproven to be a problem: I’m just sayin’ cheers, Mark

I've had a character in one of my games who had a similar power to the one described – that he could channel spirits who could then talk/write/act using his body. The power was built using multiform – in this case, his physical stat.s did not change, but his various forms had different skills, knowledge and even magical powers … plus potentially, complications. As a limitation the multiform had the limitations: extra time (it took time for him to call the spirits) and focus (in his case, remains or artifacts associated with the spirit, plus a drum) and side effect on an EGO roll (If he failed the roll, he lost control of the spirit which took over his body). Now in this case, he could only channel the spirits of known ancestors - that he had remains or an artifact for – so it was easy to prebuild the alternate forms. This approach to channeling lets the character actually access and use the skills and powers of the spirits: potentially a powerful and always a very flexible build. If I understand you rightly, you want to be able to channel any spirit in the area. In this case, it becomes a bit more complicated. I can think of several approaches. First and simplest, just stick the multiform into a VPP. This lets you make up any alternate “mental form” you like, but has several problems. First off, multiform is a special power and under normal circumstances should not be used in power frameworks without GM permission. Secondly, this makes for an insanely cheap and powerful ability (which is why it would not normally be permitted). I’d regard that as giant, red, blinking stop sign. It might still be OK, but you’d need to fence it around with some severe limitations. This also requires the GM to be able to make up appropriate spirits on the fly. The second approach is use multiform and just build some generic spirits (warrior, wanderer, merchant, mage, etc) with skill such as AK:home region, rather than AK: Upper Nubia and so on. Third approach – if all you want is communication from the spirits, not actual skills/powers, is to just use retrocognition – that lets you find out what happened in the past – and simply define the limit of what can be known as “what is known by the spirits”. I’d be inclined to add the talent “Cramming” which gives you rapid access to a low level of expertise with any studied skill – in this case, allowing access to skills known by the spirit – such as a language. cheers, Mark

Given that no-one has ever seen a real pooka, and that the word has been tacked onto a bunch of different fantasy constructs (and the oldest folkloric material is incomplete, inconsistent and vague), I think you are safe in treating any claims that it's not a real pooka, with the contempt they deserve. Roleplayers like to put things into clear classes and boxes and then differentiate those boxes based on hair-splittingly tiny differences into game categories as though they were real things. I've had discussions in the past on "real trolls" and "real elves", which is pretty sad just by itself, but this also spills over into arguments about real life items. Polearms are a good example. Is there really a difference between a glaive and a glaive-guisarme? What about a glaive-guisarme-voulge-glaive? In reality, there's a wide variation of "heavy blade on a stick" all of which shade into each other and the hair-splitting comes from victorian cataloguers aided and abetted by Gary Gygax. Is a Flamberge a 2-handed sword with a wiggly blade or a light one-handed fencing sword? In reality, of course, it was both. It does not pay to be too dogmatic about these things! cheers, Mark

We do have a genderless pronoun - it/that. That should solve the problem neatly. cheers, Mark

The whole point about hate movements is about being part of a hate movement. They're not trying to accomplish anything: the hating *is* the point. The whole deal is about being encouraged by the rest of the pack to be hateful to someone. After all, what does a bully achieve when he beats up a kid much smaller than himself and forces him to eat dirt? The same thing: the thrill of abuse sanctioned by his pack. cheers, Mark

One approach is to let gods draw power from a specific source. It does not have to be worshippers - it could be a specific strange looking rock or a stream. Those things are low maintenance (unlike worshippers) but they are also subject to destruction, poisoning or alteration. And unlike worshippers, they are fixed in extent. Exactly what "drawing power" means is up to the GM, but one possibility is a cosmic VPP that you can only use for specific powers: for example, teleport to travel to your power source, clairsentience to see and hear the area around it, and powers associated with it (durability for stone, the ability to change form for water, etc). The first two powers take care of the "hearing prayers" issue - a god or godling can always choose to see and hear what's happening at their source of power, and snoop mentally on what people there are thinking, if their VPP is big enough. If they draw prayer from worship, they can choose to check out what their worshippers are doing and maybe answer a prayer or two with the powers they (or their friends: why do you think deities form pantheons?) have to hand. I'd be inclined to make the VPP start small, and geometrically increase proportional to the size, class or rarity of the power source. So the god/spirit of a weird shaped rock might get a 5 point VPP. The god/spirit of the valley of weird shaped rocks, a 10 point VPP, the god/spirit of a mountain a 20 point VPP, the god of the region, a 40 point VPP, etc. A particularly sacred mountain dotted with temples would generate more than one without. Such a VPP would be "free" but have the limitation "independant". Destroy the wierd-shaped rock and the spirit will leave. Use the sacred stream as a waste dump, ditto. Kill the worshippers and burn the church, and the power drawn from there (and the ability to see and manifest there) is lost, and so on. My initial thought - just riffing here - is that "sacredness": a sense of awe - is what is required to generate power. It's why a weird stone, and a dramatic landscape attracts/generates power while an ordinary stone and a parking lot don't. It's why worshippers write sacred, uplifting music and build and decorate awe-inspiring places of worship. Cheers, Mark

Actually, that's an easy one to answer: by looking at ancient pathogens (and comparing them with their modern descendants), you can determine the rate of evolutionary change. That's scientifically interesting, but also allows us to refine our understanding of how pathogens change and how fast, which is very, very relevant knowledge when dealing with new or unknown pathogens. By looking at *which* genes change (and how they changed) over time, you can determine which ones are under selective pressure. That tells you a lot about host defences and immunology. Again, scientifically interesting, but also practically useful in things like pharmaceutical development and plant breeding. I can think of a few other reasons as well, but you get the idea: basically you can learn a lot by looking at ancient organisms. Cheers, Mark

I have to admit that I've been paying only peripheral attention to this whole saga, but the argument that sending people hate mail (often of a pretty vile sort) was motivated by concern over ethics is so laughably stupid and self-serving that I cannot believe that anyone even considered taking it seriously. cheers, Mark

The trouble with the short adventure idea format - which used to be popular back in the days when there were roleplaying magazines - is that they are of zero use to anyone who doesn't build their own adventures: which is to say, the kind of people who actually buy adventures to run. So as an experienced GM, you'd probably get more value out of them - but as an experienced GM, you probably won't buy them. cheers, Mark

I'd agree with what Hugh said, with the caveat that while damage classes are a decent rough guide, they don't necessarily capture the effect of attacks against exotic defences, so I find it always a good idea to compare attacks with the defences I expect to be deploying as a GM. ' This is particularly important if you are playing outside a standard champions type game, where defences might be more limited. In a 4-colour superheroic game, killing attacks can be far more effective than their points total might indicate, if a lot of targets have no rDEF, while in a fantasy game, things like Flash or Entangle are often far more effective than you'd expect, simply because most foes have no defence against them. cheers, Mark

Yup. Indeed, I still use Independent pretty much as written. This has been discussed in threads elsewhere, but Independent can be used apart from focus - it could be used, for example to enchant a stream, or a person. That way, I differentiate between a focus, which is simply a way for a specific person to use their power and an independent item, which is actually the power itself in transferable format. A mage who puts a spell into a universal focus can give (or lose) that focus - and thus the power - to another character, but he doesn't lose the points and, you could say, the power is still connected to him. He could, with time, make a new focus and the old one would simply cease to function at that point. If he was killed, it would also cease to function. And so on. In that regard, a focus, even a universal one, is not the same an an independant magical item. cheers, Mark

A very simple approach is - as GM - don't give away tons of magic items. I usually don't bother, as a GM to craft things like "+1 sword" anyway. Essentially that's just adding a skill level to a sword and any mundane can do that with some sweat and some practice. Mages tend to craft items like "Sword that can cut through anything" or items they can use themselves like "Wand of Mental Agony". They tend to be much more expensive - and therefore much rarer - becoming the objects of legendary quests rather than something you find hidden in the midden after killing some goblins. As for crafting magic items, I use a simple rule: in addition to the mundane and magical skills needed to craft the item in question, the crafter has to put sufficient Xp into it to create the item - losing them himself, in the process. That alone prevents the large-scale production of magic items: any mage who did that, would soon end up with to few Xps to do anything at all. cheers, Mark

Yeah, this is one of the problems with the fantasy genre in general, and balancing it is always tricky. Magic lets players pull off all sorts of stunts. You can build defences into the game, but when you do, it starts to rapidly evolve away from the classic fantasy tropes and into something more resembling modern day/science fiction. To take the examples given above "The idea that a rich merchant or nobleman, or his security apparatus, would be so vulnerable to magical attack that they could be defeated by a single magician sipping beer in an inn across town seems ludicrous. If that were the case, the merchants and nobles wouldn't stay merchants and nobles for long. A world with accessible magical attacks would have accessible magical defenses. Those defenses might not be cheap, but they'd be there, and the wealthy, at least, would have them". Now this seems pretty reasonable, but think about the implications for a bit. If magical defences are really expensive only the richest will have them. So far, so good. Of course that means that the richest can plunder and loot their less wealthy competitors with near impunity because their competitors won't have protection against mental coercion or spying, while they do. Moreover, it implies that magic is something that can be purchased - and for the cost of mentally fortifying a mansion, you could buy a flying ship, or a series of teleportals. And for less than that, you could buy immunity to disease and aging, which is going to have some pretty serious social implications. Wealthy nobles should be able to afford armour that makes them more or less invulnerable on the battlefield, and arm themselves with weapons that allow them to annihilate mundane foes. You could, of course, handwave all that, and I've played with some GMs who do: they assume that magical defences are erected wherever the PCs happen to be - but not elsewhere - and that the monsters are wherever the PCs happen to be (but not elsewhere, except as background flavor). That's not been - in my experience - a sign of competent GM'ing. But if you don't handwave it, the game moves rapidly out of the familiar pseudo-medieval fantasy area into something by John M Harrison or Jack Vance. I'm not saying that's a bad thing: my own campaign world leans that way . I'm just pointing out that assuming a high magic environment to counter those pesky players is likely to have significant consequences. Now, of course, you could come up with reasons why that doesn't happen - and that's where the GM really needs to put in a good bit of background work. Balancing what the PCs can do with what everybody else can do is always a difficult act and it really requires a great deal of thought by the GM. You want, generally, the PCs to be able to perform heroic actions, but in most games, you don't want them to be (at least initially) totally dominating figures in the landscape. My own response to this conundrum has been to severely restrict how easy magic is to do, but allow it to be flexible and powerful. So rich merchants do lie awake and worry about mercenary mages making off with their strongbox - and they hire their own mages as guards in response. cheers, Mark

A couple of points here. First, it's a 120 active point power, so you should expect it to have pretty severe effects. You could buy an 8d6 RKA for that, which is likely to one-shot a fair number of characters: the fact that this attack is "only" 6d6 is irrelevant. Second, it's a mental power, and attacks against unusual defences are often stronger than they seem, because characters frequently don't have much defence against them. I guess you got to see that in action. As a GM, I always give powers that a ) stack a lot of advantages and b ) operate against unusual defences a careful going-over before OK'ing them for a campaign, because they can very often problematic - even at lower numbers of dice. It's simple enough to take a range of target opponents and compare the attack to their defences: if the answer is that almost everyone takes significant hurt, then the power is probably too powerful. There are at least four approaches to such problematic powers. First (and best, IMO) identify them before letting them into the game and either forbid them entirely or dial them back significantly. You need to talk to the player and explain why. A power that one-shots almost every opponent is not going to make for a challenging game, when the game's focus involves combat - and it's a bit dispiriting for the other players when they are essentially reduced to supporting cast for the giant cannon. Second, if such powers do get into the game, you need to be prepared to dial them back and - again do so in concert with the player. You really want to avoid giving the impression that you are punishing the player for being successful. Third (and to me, least appealing) you can just give the NPCs the defences that they need to render the power less effective, even if conceptually, it makes no sense. Players hate this, and with good reason: you're essentially singling them out for a special beatdown. Fourth is a variant on #3: accept that the PC in question can lock down most targets and adjust the game to account for that. It means that giant cannon PC is going be the target of most attacks, when word gets out. Villians who expect to encounter the PC in question will have back-up plans. They might visit the local gadgetmonger for helmets that give them short term mental defences, or mental reflect powers, etc. In some ways, this is cool - the world adapts to the PC, and players tend to enjoy having a direct effect on the game. It can be difficult to balance though. Other players may feel slighted if they feel their PCs are less important, and the player in the spotlight might feel victimised if Brainfreeze girl is the primo target and ends up spending a lot of time being rushed to hospital. Hope that helps. cheers, Mark

Our mid-to-high level game has been set on hiatus - a status I suspect to become permanent, since the GM has problems handling powerful characters, and we've started a new low-level game. So I did a picture of my paladin, back at the monastery where he started, in an uncharacteristically relaxed pose. cheers, Mark

Hmmm ... Remind me of the cauldron-born, who were much hated by my players, back in the day. Nice writeup. Cheers, Mark

"Undebunked" simply means that nobody is actively going out, and wasting time in the middle of a genuine health emergency checking for people who probably don't exist in villages that probably don't exist. Proving that this didn't happen in the madhouse that is currently Liberia is not only really, really hard, but actively dangerous. So don't expect any actual debunking, any time soon. Also, in the same vein, don't expect much evidence supporting it either. You could say the same for the published articles that Ebola is being used by Liberals to destroy religious Africans, or that it's a US DoD project being tested on Africans or that the IMF is using Ebola to force African governments to accept austerity plans. There are any number of kooky Ebola conspiracy theories and oddball articles in circulation. Basically, anything that comes out of the Evangelical garbage press machine should automatically be assumed to be false, unless it's been validated elsewhere (not just now, but at any time), and the "rising from the dead" story is a good example of this. It's been circulating in the evangelical nonsenseosphere for a while - but once it got picked up by the mainstream press it was debunked in a day or so. That said, it has to be admitted that it is at least plausible: healthcare systems in these countries are rudimentary and they are falling apart under the stress. People are afraid to approach potential ebola cases (which is fair enough: the Liberian man who died recently in the US was apparently infected when he helped a pregnant woman to hospital) and sick people are afraid to go to hospital "because people are dying there" - which is true. I had an experience along the lines of this story, during a much smaller ebola outbreak in DR Congo about 8 years ago - a man, living alone caught ebola. When the response team arrived they were told he was dead (and since he had no family in the village, the body had simply been left in his house), and in fact he was lying quite still, crammed in between his bed and the wall. He sure as hell looked dead, but actually was just unconscious. I've also had experience of cases of people who it was claimed had ebola and were "dying" but who in fact had malaria and recovered just fine. cheers, Mark

Oh - and one other GM'ing trick I find useful: in many games, bulk NPCs - minions and the like, tend to just have base 10 stats with a standard template whacked on top, meaning that all guards have an EGO of 10, for example. What I tend to do is - when relevant - mix this up a bit, by rolling non-essential characteristics on 3d6, and essential ones on 7+d6 - or even higher. So for example, STR, DEX and CON are essential characteristics for an ordinary guard: you won't normally get a fighting job if you are unusually weak, clumsy or feeble. But guards - outside of the elite - are generally not screened for intelligence or strength of will. So although the average in stats is assumed to be 10+Template, if it comes to a specific question - is this particular guard strong enough to force that blocked door, is this particular guard strong-willed enough to resist domination, then I roll. That way, instead of all guards having STR 13 and EGO 10, they have that as an average and actually range from STR 11-16 and EGO 3-18. It doesn't sound like much, but simply having the possibility that one guard has in a group has EGO 15 is enough to suddenly make things much less certain for a mindmage. cheers, Mark

Actually, if the players are smart, then many fights CAN be set up like that. In the game I referred to, we actually rescued a captured prisoner from a fortified mansion house while sitting and eating dinner in a nearby inn. I kid you not. By using relatively minor mind control and telepathy on some of the junior (non-combat) staff (Cook's helper and cook, specifically) we were able to get a a good layout of the mansion, the guards and potential location of the prisoner (since they still had to eat, it was relatively easy to figure out who the guards were suddenly collecting food for). Mindscan allowed the location of guards and invisible domination (the EGO-reducing effect) allowed me to gradually expand the area of mindscan I could cover while still staying invisible to the people being scanned. It ended with all the guards along the escape route going to sleep, while the guard captain opened the prisoner's cell and escorted him to the back door where the rest of the party walked over and collected him. You can see why that character was retired. Then we got the hell out of town, before the guard captain had time to raise a general alarm among his troops. Now that was a pretty extreme example, but even in a more normal adventuring setting, a phase is only 3-4 seconds, so it takes a mind mage perhaps 12-16 seconds to scan a room, identify a target, crush their EGO to null and mindcontrol them - he can do all of that in the time that the rogue is opening the lock. Given 30 seconds, he can do that to 2-3 opponents. We're not talking about locking down the group for a half hour or so. However, even given that experience, and given my own experience with mind mages in my own game, I don't think we really need to revisit the rules. Fantasy Hero is different from Champions in that many of the "mundane" powers we take for granted in modern setting - heavy firepower in the form of military equipment, instant communication in the form of telephones, etc don't exist for the bulk of the population in the standard pseudo-medieval setting. That can make some powers more powerful than they would otherwise be. In addition, in a Champions setting, all PCs - and many important NPCs, are superheroic and will have powers, and their minions will have powers as well. So players can't assume that - say - Viper agents will be unable to detect invisibility, in the same way that they can generally assume that for a bunch of town guards. More: you can assume the Viper guards have radio, reducing your ability to pick off small groups. But magical instant communication is not the default for minions in most fantasy settings. This is not just an issue for mental powers. A 20 point forcefield is not over the top in Champions: but in Fantasy Hero, it essentially makes you nigh-invulnerable to mundane weapons. Flight is cool, but not overwhelming in Champions: but in a standard pseudo-medieval setting it renders the bulk of castle defences and town walls irrelevant - in a way that is not the case for a modern military setting where airborne assault is assumed to be a possibility. In other words, it's a setting problem, not a power-specific one. There's two ways to handle this: the first is to simply to fight fire with fire. Assume a high-magic setting and simply swap out technology with magic. Town guards have 2-way mindlink, and are armed with magical firelances. Castles have lightning guns mounted in their towers, and merchants can travel from town to town on the royal teleport network. It's an interesting concept, but takes us far away from the traditional fantasy mileu. It also has the potential for turning into fighting fire with gasoline: setting off a magical arms race, where players seek ever more powerful magical gear and the GM responds with ever-more powerful magically enhanced foes. That is what eventually happened to the game I referred to in the examples above: it was set in Tekumel, which is already a high magic/magicotech setting, and as the campaign developed, the gap between magic-haves and have-nots became insupportable. One scene that stands out in my memory was the party warrior leading a squad of soldiers in battle. The squad was hit with a Doomkill spell (a very powerful explosion). Every single soldier in the squad was killed outright - except for Ke'el, the warrior, secure in his magically-enhanced armour, who wasn't even stunned. Later in the same game, he charged down a huge squad of elite archers - whose arrows pattered off his armour like gentle rain. It was a great game, in a lot of ways, and I learned a lot from it, but the GM closed it down: the power creep became too much. Personally, while allowing for higher-powered magic, I prefer lower-magic settings. You can build for fantasy games in this mould, but it takes a bit more thought. There are a lot of ways to do it. One is to restrict magic, so that it cannot be used at will: as already noted I require ALL human magic (PCs and NPCs) to take limitations that restrict how much it can be used (especially in combat). Secondly, I don't allow players - initially at least - to design their own spells, without very compelling reasons, and I require magic to fall into defined schools, making it hard (not impossible, just hard) to master every aspect of magic. These two options not only make the mind mage playable again, but they greatly ease the problem with all types of mages. I also assume that magic - though uncommon - is ubiquitous, and that people living in this world know this: so they take it into account. For castles, for example, they know that airborne attackers/infitrators are a possibiliy, so castles are designed with internal checkpoints and defences against internal as well as external attack. It doesn't have to be supermagical - an iron door and some sentries will often do. Key areas in more sophisticated defences can be expected to have magical defences as well: a simple mindlink spell for key guard posts, an amulet for the guard captain with 5 points of mDEF, a spell to detect mental control ... etc. It doesn't have to be much: I'm not a big fan of the heavy-handed approach such as "The entire castle is covered by a field that blocks your magic and you can't dispel it, so nyah, nyah"). Secret organisations will assume that they can be watched/mind-controlled, etc. Most thieves guilds, for example operate in a cell system, where the members of a gang don't actually know the identity or location of their controller, so that if one gang is compromised, the whole guild is not compromised, much as terrorist operate today. With a little forethought, I haven't had too many problems with mindmages or indeed mages at all. At the same time, they are always valued party members.I don't think I've ver had a FH group that didn't include at least some mages, and generally more than half the group tends to have a least a smidgeon of magical ability by the end of a campaign: if they don't start with it, they pick it up along the way. cheers, Mark

Actually, active points caps are not a core option for a reason. The vast majority of experienced Hero system GMs I know don't use them. I guess they have a place in some games, but as a guideline to effectiveness, active points are not a good indicator. The GM needs to actually look at builds, and if you actually look at builds, a points cap is largely irrelevant. And in a game where we had a warrior who could soak ridiculous amounts of damage and dish out 4d6 killing with his greatsword, or an archer who could reliably shoot enemies in the face, the mind mage didn't dominate because he had a 10d6 mind control. He did so because he could neutralise opposition from the other side of town - locate and defeat foes before they were even aware the fight had started. So, yeah, I guarantee I could build a brutally effective mind mage for fantasy hero with a 45 point cap - the cumulative advantage alone makes the cap largely irrelevant, essentially proving my first point And as I note below, it's not really active points that are the problem. The whole comment about "casting spells over and over" suffers the same failing: it shows you are still thinking like a fighter: go up mano a mano and whack 'em in the face with your spell . However, mindscan and invisible power effects allow a mind mage to locate enemies before they can see him and yes, hit them several times with a spell ... without them knowing it. Until suddenly, they turn on their fellows in a murderous rage, or fall asleep, or open a castle gate, or ... whatever. Likewise, the comment about EGO drain not making much difference is not accurate. Have a look at the bestiary, or marauders & minions. The vast majority of foes have EGOs of 10 or less. Few have more than 13. Dropping someone's defence by 10, moves them from the +20 to the +30 category. That's a *huge* increase in power and means even with the 45 active point cap you proposed, that absolute domination of many foes is not only possible, but is likely to be routine. But in a way, the fact that mental powers can be very powerful, is not actually the core of the problem. The problem is that the style of play best suited to the mind mage - stay away from the action, neutralise enemies from a distance, extract information without physical confrontation, etc. is not much fun for the other players, and often vice versa. If the party frequently enters an encounter to find half their foes asleep and the other half fighting each other, the fighter feels a bit redundant. If the mind mage uses mindscan to check the castle bit by bit and neutralise the sentries, or get them to open doors, the rogue is likely to feel overshadowed. On the other hand, if the party likes to hurl itself into the fray, the mind mage is likely to feel out of place. That's the problem! And that's why I retired the PC in question despite the fact that I enjoyed the heck out of playing him. Cheers, Mark

It's not just a question of END - ultimately, the swordsman has one problem-solving technique: hit it with a piece of sharp metal. A mage has - potentially - an unlimited range of solutions. While I am not a huge fan of the D&D implementation of vancian magic, one thing it does do, is ensure that a wizard cannot automatically have a solution for every problem, because he has to choose his solutions before he knows for sure what the problems will be. Together with the fact that magic-users have a limited amount of power to use per day, that balances the scales somewhat. If that's what you want, there are multiple ways to achieve it. The closest to an actual vancian (or more accurately, "Dying Earth"/ "Lyonesse") style magic is a simple VPP with all spells taking the extra time, concentration, skill roll and apparatus limitations, plus the trigger advantage. I've used this myself in my games and it works fine. If you want to make it really Vancian, add "Independent" which means it's all about the apparatus - anybody can potentially cast spells, if they have your spellbook and magical gear (and then you can't), thought the results could be amusing if they lack the skill necessary to do it properly. See, for example "Cugel the Clever". In my games, I use LTE as a limiter - spells cost LTE instead of normal END, so that spellcasting gradually exhausts the caster. I think the single most important thing is to decide the "feel" you want magic to have and work from there to build it. cheers, Mark

Actually, even leaving aside the assumption that games are run using the optional rule about active points caps (not something we've ever bothered with), you can easily hit Ego+30 in a game with a 45 point active cap. All you need to do is lead with an Ego suppress or Drain - a tactic the PC in question was fond of. It's made even easier, by the fact that in Fantasy games, many physically powerful enemies are not that smart, and may have EGO lower than 10. Or, as already pointed out, using telepathy to ferret out already existing antagonisms or psych. lims in your targets gives you a handy lever to work with. But it can be even easier than that. "Making Friends look like Enemies" with mental illusions is a major change to setting and that is only Ego+10. It's even called out as an Ego+10 result in the rules. Any halfway competent illusionist should have his enemies fighting each other on a regular basis. Heck, I've done this to my own player's PCs when GM'ing from time to time. Mental powers are exceedingly flexible and their inherent invisibility, "sort of" indirect and range allow them to be used in ways that conventional attack powers can't. Obviously they work best when you are not in a direct confrontation, but all that means is that they are best used with a little foresight. cheers, Mark