Markdoc

As a side note, I find it's easier to sell things to players if you have an in-game rationale as well as a solid mechanic. So I emphasise to the players the 'physical' aspect of spellcasting, for example the deep exhaustion that comes from casting, and the fact that a mage is actually fatigued after a good bout of spellery. In more than one instance I have had fleeing PCs having to run away carrying their mage because the mage was too exhausted to run A couple of minor mechanical points. 1. I don't want to completely forbid spells with longer duration, so I allow reduced END on spells - even zero END. But all spells must have at least "costs END to cast - 1/4" 2. This rule applies to humans/humanoids, not to innately magical beings: a ghost does not pay LTE to be desolid, for example Cheers, Mark

Note: the system I suggested doesn't just use the LTE rules (which would take a long time to be noticeable, if ever). It uses LTE instead of END. So to cast a spell with 50 active points - which would normally cost 5 END - would cost 5 LTE. Since a character Recovers his REC in LTE for every full five hours of rest, it’s likely going to take him an hour or two to get all of his LTE back. I give spells a -1/2 limitation to reflect this. Cheers, Mark

Just to follow up that post, perhaps the answer to "What kind of fantasy adventures would you like to see?" is "Campaign-in-a-box". Whether Herodom assembled would go for that idea (Hero has always been about rolling your own, after all) or even whether they are numerous enough to support that approach, I don't know (I'm sceptical, to be honest: it kind of seems like a niche within a niche). But then, that's also been true of individual adventures. On a more positive note, good quality fan content is relatively cheap to produce and distribute today, so maybe the question of how financially viable it is, is not that relevant. Nobody's going to make a living writing adventures or adventure paths for Hero, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. cheers, Mark

Nicely put - but to be honest, I think this is a very large part of their appeal. Us old grognards can complain about spoon-feeding and how in our day, you had to sketch out your own adventures with dirt and a sharp stick (and we liked it that way!), but observing our own GM, I think the reason she's starting over with an adventure path is because it drastically reduces the amount of prep. time she has to do. Adventure paths do suffer from the grind and escalation mechanism, but that’s inherent in D20 and the resource management style of the game. Still, the appeal for a harried GM is undeniable. The GM who has started us on the recent adventure path used to do what we are discussing – taking published adventures and adapting them for her ongoing campaign, but the last adventure came close to wiping us out (and we did suffer one permanent unplanned PC fatality) … while the one before was a bit of a cakewalk. As the party increases in power, adapting single adventures becomes a bit of an art. I think that’s what pushed her over the edge, though she also noted how time-consuming it was to do. This, I think, is why adventure paths have succeeded financially, where single adventures –even in the same settings - have failed. They offer an out-of-the-box solution. And if it’s time-consuming to adapt a D20 adventure to a D20 group, imagine the stretch needed for a Hero system GM! Although Paizo is making hay with their own setting, it is neither crucial (nor, apparently, especially lucrative) – with a few nips and tucks, you can use their adventure paths in any D20 setting, since so much of the material (ancient ruins, depraved wizards, elves n’ orcs, etc) is simply generic. That’s hard to do for Hero system, since there is no “generic language” of monsters and powers. A scenario that uses the Tuala Morn setting is not going to translate at all well to Atlantis and vice versa. There’s also a separate problem: one catch to adventure paths (or any long scenario) is keeping the PCs on the railroad … er, advancing the plot. The game we just started contains one of the most blatant bits of railroading I’ve come across, to get the “heroes” together and headed in more or less the right direction. That was clumsily handled, but it is true that some groups have difficulty with getting things started. Sandbox style games (which is what I tend to run) can get around the railroad problem by allowing the illusion of freedom, but they require a GM who can ad lib, and not every GM can. They also require the GM is at ease with the background and material … and if you really are, you probably don’t need published material so much. And there is a third, but related problem, which is that for any long-running game, it becomes more and more difficult to predict what capabilities the PCs will have (and therefore plan for it in advance and lay the railroad tracks). A murder mystery will need drastic modification if one of the PCs has – say – retrocognition. In D20, you can make pretty safe assumptions about what won’t be available at a certain level. Hero system has a special problem in that you can’t make those assumptions: a starting fantasy party could easily include a PC who can fly, teleport or turn invisible, which renders some challenges moot. And of course they can diverge even more radically as the game progresses. That makes tying a long-term series of adventures to a setting even more attractive, because in Hero, it’s one way to ensure some control of what the PCs can and cannot do. None of these are insuperable problems – I’ve run several games that had plotlines that developed pretty much as originally envisaged, after several years of play*, and I’m in the process of setting up a new game of the same kind. But such a game demands descriptive planning, not prescriptive planning. The precise details of each challenge can then be tailored to the PCs I actually end up with. It’s not a sandbox game so much as a series of linked sandboxes J Cheers, Mark *as a GM, I always find rewarding that moment when the players figure out that what they thought was going on was not in fact what was going on, or recognize that what is happening now is a direct result of something they did years or months ago.

So's our cat Cheers, Mark

I'm guessing "Epic, sweeping long storylines" and "Political intrigue" . However, there's a reason that's considered a classic 30 years on: few products have lived up to that bar. I never ran the campaign as-is, but I still have the original books and stole liberally from it. I do think that there is demand for long storylines: Paizo has been making out pretty well with their adventure paths, which - like Enemy Within - are sequential episodic adventures strung into a single storyline. Unlike single adventures, they seem to be commercially viable. In fact, our gaming group just started one last weekend (Rise of the Rune Lords), after our regular GM burnt out on her own homebrew (high level) campaign and suddenly put it on hiatus. When I published my own hero system campaign online in the same style (years ago) it got a metric buttload of downloads and I got a lot of feedback from GMs, suggesting that Hero system GMs are in the same boat. cheers, Mark

The way I did it was simply to require all spells to consume a resource that doesn’t renew as fast as END. You can call it power, or mana, or thingamabob and design it how you like. I used Long Term Endurance (LTE) which is how Hero system models fatigue. Basically, I just said “Spellcasting is very stressful: if you cast a lot of spells in a short time, you get exhausted”. The in-game mechanic was that spells used LTE instead of regular ol’ END (and all spells required at least END to cast). Since LTE recovers on a timeframe of hours, not seconds, casters need to conserve their resources, to some extent. They can nova and let loose with a ton of magic in one fight … but they risk then being “out of gas” for a day or more. In addition, if they run their END down to nothing, they may end up so exhausted that they cannot easily perform mundane actions like running or climbing. cheers, Mark

One system that had both spontaneous and rote magic was Runequest. Rote spells (spirit magic or divine magic) was the standard. You still needed to be capable of casting the spell (so no free assembly line magic") but you could safely cast any spell you could learn. Spells were pretty valuable (so people would pay to learn them: there’s a business there) but anyone could have a few spells. In game terms, this meant characters bought a multipower (load ‘em up with a few limitations and they become pretty cheap) and each new spell was a slot – which (points-wise) is also dirt cheap. Most spells end up being 1 CP each. You can actually get useful spellcasting for 6-10 real points in that setting, and “domestically useful magic” for much less. Additionally the game had Sorcery, which was “sort of” freeform magic. This worked by buying a VPP. You could only put rote spells into it, but you also bought several skills plus Aid which allowed you to modify the spells in your VPP. That was kind of a complicated system to design, but it gave very distinct feel in-game and in play, it actually worked surprisingly well (the complexity is mostly under the hood) although it requires a player who is comfortable with VPPs and modifying powers on the fly. Much more flexible than rote magic, but also requiring a much, much higher investment of points: the difference between an amateur and a professional when it came to magic. The system is here http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/hero/fantasy/hq/index.html if you want some inspiration. Cheers, Mark

Another approach is o buy several uses of Cramming, with the limitation "must acquire skills from target via telepathy" which is probably worth -3/4 to -1. That would give you a basic knowledge in any skill they had. It's also a slightly abusive way to rapidly acquire any language cheers, Mark

Personally, I let the clergy of the various faiths argue it out among themselves. Explanations range from "The gods crave the blood of heroes!" through "God answers all prayers, even if we can't see the outcome at the time" to "Hah! You think mighty Sky-god have time to listen you puny whining? No! He busy with sky! And clouds! You must be doing great deeds self!" cheers, Mark

The problem with this is that 1) multiclassing is a D&D thing and 2) the original source material that D&D (and the rest of us) draw on doesn't really match up with this. Galahad for example is the perfect paladin - he's the only guy who can kick Lancelot's butt in a fair fight, so he's generally reckoned to be Europe's best warrior. However, he also has high level cleric magic powers: he repairs a broken sword with a touch, heals wounds unhealable by lesser clerics, summons magical transport, talks directly (and regularly) with God, etc. Lancelot - also described as a paladin - has no magical powers at all. He just hits things real good (he even hits on the queen, but that's another story). Shucks, one one of the original Paladins was Archbishop Turpin who was ... yup, a "cleric". OK, Mallory, Einhard and the rest probably didn't have class balance in mind when they wrote these stories, but the point is still clear: until the sage of Lake Geneva wrote his version, "Paladin" didn't automatically mean fighter-with-some-divine-magic, and high level divine powers were not restricted to "clerics". And if you look at fiction or games/movies outside our narrow clique it still doesn't. Clerics do seem to have more or less gotten a lock on healing, but in anime, Paladin can mean "Magical fighting girl with cat" or "Bizarre spellcaster with many knives". In a lot of online games, or fiction it can just mean "Heavy fighter" or "Knight". cheers, Mark

The actual mechanics (1 turn = 12 seconds, Hit points are spilt up into STUN (short term damage) and BOD (long term damage), etc) are mostly beside the point. The real difference between D&D and Hero system is that the former is "descriptive" and the latter is "prescriptive". What that means in simple terms is that game mechanics in D&D are defined by simply writing down what they do. There's no underlying mechanic for much of what's in the game: it's up to the individual designer (or GM) to decide how they want something to work and and where/how they place it in the general game framework. Nothing can be 100% defined in a face to face RPG, but Hero system is prescriptive - meaning that almost all game content is codified, making it easier to rate powers against each other. As an example, the well known and well-loved D&D spell fireball is simply defined (1d6/level, up to 10d6, causes fire damage, 20' radius, reflex save for half). But what if you want to tweak it? There are some rough guidelines - based on metamagic, increasing the maximum number of d6 damage it can do should raise the level by 1 or 2, increasing the area should increase it by 2, changing it to another damage type, by 1. But these are very rough guidelines. Changing from fire to ice increases it by 1. But what if you want to change it to sound to make an explosive sound? That’s clearly more powerful (since resistance to sonic attacks is rare), but there’s no guideline … maybe two levels? What if you wanted to change the save from reflex to fortitude, to reflect the ability to shrug off the deafening boom? There’s no mechanism for that – is it an advantage, a weakness or no difference? Personally, as an experienced GM, I’d see it as an advantage (for PCs) since many critters have a better reflex than fortitude save, but I know equally experienced GMs who disagree. Even if it is an advantage, is it worth a whole level? When adjusting spells or class features the only tool you have to adjust power is level and that’s a pretty coarse scale – a spell that is awesome at 3rd level might be meh at 4th. A class feature that is effective at 2nd level might be useless at 6th, and so on. And to make it harder, many abilities don’t scale and are therefore hard to place. A class feature like “mettle” (the ability to completely avoid effects from a spell if you make your FORT or WILL save) is pretty cool – but where does it belong? The analogous ability to avoid damage on a REFLEX save is usually rated at 2nd level … but mettle comes in as a class feature in different character classes at anywhere from 1st to 11th level. The designers’ views rate it as anything from “near useless” (because relatively few spells target FORT or WIS compared to REFLEX) or “Awesome” (because a few spells have severe effects even on a failed save). And how do you compare it to other powers? Is it equivalent to “magic missile” (which does the same damage as an arrow from a light bow) or “Baleful polymorph” (which lets you instantly turn even powerful enemies into small harmless animals) - to pick two spells accessible at the same levels as mettle in different classes. The prescriptive nature of Hero means that the GM gets a readout of exactly how powerful an ability is. This is not perfect: a small flash attack is not by itself very powerful but it can be more potent than expected, if most foes have no flash defence, for example. But in general, the Hero system provides a good readout of power for most abilities and also lets you customize with a fair degree of certainty. There’s a second aspect to this prescriptive/descriptive thing. Because all powers in Hero are built from components (defence/damage/movement, etc) on a defined scale, the game scales up relatively smoothly – you can (and we have) play Fantasy hero with 25 point characters and with 350 point characters and characters can grow from very low points totals to very high relatively smoothly. In D&D, scaling is a problem, for two reasons. First, because at the higher levels, the fact that many abilities are “descriptive” means that you get absolute outcomes (and because we’re talking high level, those outcomes are usually serious). A good example – we’re at 13th level in our current Pathfinder game, and two sessions ago, a greenhag threw a Destruction spell at our sorceress. She burst into flames and burned away until nothing was left, not even ashes. Game over, man. High level D&D often becomes what is referred to as “rocket tag” because the first one to fail a save loses. While you can occasionally get similar outcomes in Hero, the scaling aspect of all powers means that’s the exception, not the rule. The second aspect of this is that at higher levels, D&D is all about spellcasters. When we hit 13th level, the cleric got the ability to create alternate universes (albeit very small ones), regrow lost limbs and kill or blind masses of foes with a word, and a bunch of other stuff, plus a small bonus to saves, combat and hitpoints. The sorcerer gains the ability to blind with a word, to kill large numbers of weaker foes instantly, teleport any distance, and take the form of almost any creature up to an including large dragons, and a bunch of other stuff, plus a small bonus to saves, combat and hitpoints. The fighter gets a small bonus with a new type of weapon and a slightly larger bonus to saves, combat and hitpoints. A lot of D&D campaigns start to fall apart at this point (and our own GM is hinting that she’d like to end our game soon, and start again at a lower level) because of this issue. Official pathfinder games (Pathfinder society) all end at level 12, because of it. A lot of GMs cannot cope with providing meaningful challenges or spotlight time to all players due to the vast power differential between PC classes, and also cope with the change to power levels which render the standard pseudo-medieval background of most D&D games irrelevant. Because Hero has no inbuilt "classes" as such, it does not have to suffer from this problem and a high point "fighter" can remain as relevant as a high point "mage" - in and out of combat. The flip side of this is that the exponential D&D approach means that unless the GM goes gonzo with magic items, you have a pretty good idea of what PCs can do –especially at lower levels. Not just combat-wise, but also out of combat. Lower level groups in D&D will almost never have access to flight, telepathy, teleport, weather control, etc – all those things that can really mess with a planned scenario. That cannot be assumed in Hero, which makes writing scenarios and planning a game more work. Pretty much every Hero system campaign is individual, and what works in one cannot be assume to work in others. You can reuse material more easily than in most D&D games, since the points scale is the same, but you cannot just assume that what will challenge one group will challenge another, nor can you assume “class distribution” so that the PCs will have specific powers available at a specific points total. The better scaling and balance of Hero comes at the cost of more GM work cheers, Mark

Ah! OK, cool. I'd play in a game like that cheers, Mark

Actually, for a game like this, I wouldn't necessarily use a Mcguffin. If the players were up for it, I'd encourage them to take direct action. First maybe resisting a corrupt local lord, then fighting to retain their newly won freedom from his allies and overlord, and just build from there to a point where either they lead armies to try to put the old empire together, or they try to build a successor kingdom that can stand against the coming slide into barbarism. If the players are not up for it, give them a sympathetic NPC: they can be Merlin and the round table to his Arthur. A game like that would have fewer dungeons, but more battles, assassinations and intrigue. It's quite doable - I ran a game that incorporated some these elements that was rather successful. The PCs started as low-level feudal retainers and ended as warlords leading hundreds of soldiers into battle - while at the same time trying to derail a conspiracy that threatened to tip their whole region into a new dark age. The game ran for more than 100 sessions over several years and the PCs went from 100 points to nearly 300 IIRC. Cheers, Mark

Given the fuzzy nature of descriptions such as cleric and paladin in real life, and the flexible nature of Hero, I don’t think it makes much sense to try and cram abilities into a tight box. After all, a “cleric” of the great snake god of a jungle tribe is likely to have a completely different skillset from the “cleric” of a pseudo-medieval knightly order, and both are probably quite different from the skillset of a “cleric” of the brothel-temple of the Goddess of Love. J Paladin is a bit easier, given that by definition Paladins are supposed to be warriors and paragons, but even if you go the holy warrior route, a “Paladin” of a pseudo-European knightly order is still likely to look pretty different from a “Paladin” of the Aztec Jaguar God. I think it’s a far better idea to define the character by what the PC and GM agree is suitable for the setting, and then build from there, rather than trying to pigeonhole them. If you want to call your PC a paladin and the name fits, then why not? As an example, I like the holy warrior archetype and have played multiple variants on it in my time, but the right now, I am playing two D&D games: the most hidebound of all “archetype-based” systems. In one, I am playing a “Paladin” – not a knight in shining armour, but a lightly-armoured martial artist type, who wanders the land “doing good”. Your basic mysterious stranger type. The concept there is not “medieval knight” but an anime- or wuxia-style shih or swordmaster who pops up, kills the bad guys or rights the wrongs and then moves on. But he’s still very much a paladin, for all of that. Of course, it’s never a bad thing to build “packages” to help the players build their characters and the GM to assemble NPCs in a hurry: maybe that’s where we should be looking? For example, for the character above, you could build a Hero version that looked roughly like. Light fighter package (enhanced DEX, STR, weapon and armour FAM, CSLs) Martial artist (enhanced DEX, STR, Stealth, Acrobatics, appropriate KS’s, Martial arts powers, CSLs) Acolyte package (appropriate KS’s, minor magic VPP) You could build a more standard paladin along the same lines by replacing the light fighter package with a heavy fighter package, and then filling in the gaps with points as you feel inclined. Cheers, Mark

Unless ... the heroes can stop it. Isn't that what heroes do? cheers, Mark

That's very D&D thinking though: and not everyone plays D&D-based fantasy. Traditionally, paladins were simply exemplars of the knighly virtues: they didn't need to have any religious trappings apart from the usual knightly piety. Typically the only power they had was supernatural combat ability. They didn't even have to be "good" in the D&D sense of the word - Charlemagne's order of paladins were arrogant and violent and frequently fought each other. So did Arthur's for that matter, though they got cleaned up as time went on. Given that cleric is also a general catchphrase, I'd be loath to try and pigeonhole them: a cleric is one who has taken clerical orders. Depending on his build, he could be an assassin or inquisitor, sent out to eliminate enemies of the faith, a pious sorceror learned in ancient lore or a holy warrior (with or without magical powers). A paladin, by definition has to be a warrior, but he could be a gentleman or noble, a rough old campaigner, or a jedi-type. He (or she) also needs some kind of code - chivalric or otherwise - without that, they're just a knight, but magical powers while certainly appropriate, are not required. Cheers, Mark

Cultural flavour is the major difference, I think. That should come through maybe in KS' and in complications, but a fantasy assassin from "the asassin's guild" could easily look pretty much exactly like a fantasy ninja, mechanicswise. Cheers, Mark

I have had two players like this. I found myself forced to remind them that in real life, normal people will often stand and fight when faced with danger - sometimes even extreme danger. In our case, we simply let the characters run away and continued without them, or the players. Everybody else was enjoying the game, which ended up running for years (real time). I think it sensible not to play if you don't enjoy the game, but it's possible to bow out gracefully. Cheers, Mark

Really? Which knights are we talking about? The highly-trained mid-period military orders, or the barely trained (but hard as nails) thugs who looted their way down Byzantine italy? Or the hungarian knights with their light horses and bows? The aristocratic french knights or or the common-born, unfree German ministerales? For that matter, which samurai? The proud, but poorly-trained samurai of the Bojin war? The lightly-armed skirmishers of the Genpai war? Or the heavy, organised forces of the Sengoku Jidai? The aristocratic, cultured warriors of the 1600's or the boorish, country bumpkin sword-swingers who created the first shogunates? All of these - both knights and samurai - are very different one from the other in terms of training, weapons, attitudes and history. All they have in common, really is that they were professional warriors: and that's my point. The same is true of ninja. The Iga and Kōga clans may have produced professional spies and assassins, but the bulk of the ninja seem to have been recruited from among ordinary commoners, and often were apparently thugs and highwaymen. "Ninja" were't just (or even mostly) spies and assassins. Many ninja in the sengoku era were simply military scouts, who fought openly alongside regular military and the word was also used for agitators, who were apparently often recruited from among the gangs and gamblers that were the Yakuza's forerunners. In the later period, "ninja" were also recruited from among condemned prisoners. So in many regards, they are not that different from the spies, assassins, military scouts and agitators recruited by European nobles throughout the centuries - just with better press. After all, most of what we "know" about the ninja was made up by popular playwrights long after the ninja had ceased to be relevant. Even the famous ninja costume probably comes from there: as far as we know it was simply an adaption of the Bunraku puppeteer's costume, which was used on stage because the audience knew it meant the person wearing it was "invisible"*. If you prefer your ninja more fantasy-oriented: mystically powered members of secretive organisations, that's fine ... but they still don't seem all that different to me from the assassin's guilds of more western-oriented fantasy. It's more a question of style, attitude and how the GM and players want to spin it. This shouldn't be taken as negative: I loves me some old-fashioned anime-style ninja action. But really, for me, rogue/ninja is more question of how you want your special effects presented. cheers, Mark *an amusing side note: this is still a practice today. The Ise shrines are so sacred that only the high priest and (on special occasions) members of the imperial family can enter. So who keeps them clean, repairs the thatched roofs and weeds the grounds? Officially, nobody. In practice, however, it's done by temple staff, dressed in the black ninja/bunraku outfit, which makes them "invisible" - when performing their duties, they are referred to as "crows" and are considered to be "not there"

There's two things here. First thing - I guess I wasn't clear with my response: the only time you'd need to duck and weave is if a big strong guy is trying to open your tin skin with a halberd or similar – that was the meaning behind my comment about the focus on heavy weapons. To me, that seems fair enough, but if you want an even tankier tank who can just take that, you can still build it. It’s true that it’s easier/cheaper to be “skilled” than “hard to hurt”, but skilled makes it easier to hit. It’s less efficient at making you hit harder: the fact that you need 2x3 point skill levels to add 1 DC and the fact that weapons (in most games) are reduced in damage potential by both STR min and “no more than double base damage” means that “hard to hurt” is still a totally viable strategy (especially when combined with “free” armour). Such a character may get hit a lot … but will usually weather that with little or no damage. Of course, “hard to hurt” can also overlap with skilled: a high DCV bought with the “only in armour” limitation can be defined as “the attack glances off my armour with no significant effect”. In D&D – a game not known for flexible special effects – my Paladin has Evasion: the ability to avoid any damage if you make a reflex save (where allowed). It’s typically defined as “dodging the attack”, but with the GM’s permission, I’ve just defined it as “neutralize the effect by pure faith”. You could easily do the same with DCV in Hero system. The second thing: making a decreased STUNx is going to be hard because it’s not applied to your own powers, but to the powers being used against you. I would NOT allow it as a GM. But we do have two tools which allow something like this: damage reduction and damage negation. Damage reduction is a classic “tough guy” power for Fantasy tanks, and even 25% can be very helpful. 50% stun only rDamage reduction (requires a CON roll) is not only “in genre” but actually quite cost effective. I’ve thought quite a lot about how armour actually works. Flexible armour reduces impact (to some extent) and “cutting/piercing” (quite a lot). Rigid armour reduces impact (greatly) and “cutting/piercing” (also greatly). What that means in practice is that in flexible armour you feel the effect of blows that have minimal effect when you are in rigid armour. You could, if you wanted, define flexible armour as damage reduction and rigid armour as damage negation. Damage reduction is a bit of a blunt tool (25/50/75%) but you could further customize it by setting a cap as a custom limitation, which also brings down the price (in other words, chain mail will halve the damage from an arrow (6 DC), but not a giant hurled-boulder (12 DC). This is more complex than simple rDEF, but would probably give a more realistic feel, and you could “mix’n’match” to define armours – for example, define full plate as 4DC damage reduction, while mixed plate and chain was 2DC+50%damage reduction (off the top of my head numbers: you’d need to play with this to get the right level). Cheers, Mark

Because those values are for a “typical” supers game, where after a hard-fought battle, the PCs pick themselves up, dust off their minor bruises and scrapes and haul their unconscious (but mostly uninjured) enemies off to the police station so that they can have their day in court. If that’s how you envisage your fantasy game playing, then fine: those are the values you want. But if you want a more “typical” fantasy game where a battle involves a significant chance of injury or even (gasp!) death, then those are not the values you want: you want a higher ratio of attacks to defences. That’s why you are getting a difference in opinion. Cheers, Mark

If you have invested some/many points in damage mitigation, regular old 8 rDEF plate will let you stand there and take it. It'll stop the BOD from the average hit by a heavy Longbow, and 94% of the BOD from medium longbows. A character with an ordinary longsword is going to have trouble scratching you, unless he's very skilled. The problem of course is the STUN, and as noted, a decent PD (not superhuman, just 6-8 points) will let you soak a lot of damage. But equally obviously, PCs are not bothered by the attacks that do no significant harm - they're worried about the 1-in-108 chance of a full damage roll to the face with a big axe . That's why the discussion has focused on people who are dishing out 10-12 DC killing attacks. cheers, Mark

Because the recommendations are based on the commonest use of Hero system (the default setting, if you like) - which is Supers. In Supers, combat is common (or very common) but serious injury or death is rare. That's a 4-colour comics trope. But that trope is not true in all genres, so the recommendation doesn't apply there. Imagine if you were playing a spies and mercenaries game: how would you attempt to beef up defences to cope with modern weapons? Answer: you don't - in a game like that, firefights are dangerous things, and PCs are advised to play cautiously, not try storming forward into heavy automatic weapons fire. When James Bond is surrounded by submachine-gun-toting mooks, he surrenders and works out a cunning plan later: he doesn't pull out his trusty PPK and start gunning them down, confident in his high rDEF. Same with fantasy games. Not all fantasy games will focus on heavily-armoured tanking, and if you want that, there are various ways to do it. Actually, there's lots of things that you can do. DCV's important of course, and there are lots of ways to get it, not just DEX. But characters who want to be Tanks can look at OCV - and Block - as an effective tool, as well as damage-reducing powers*. Nu Soard has a list of suggestions, and we could easily come up with more, if you wanted: you could start a "How to Tank in FH" thread. In the end, there's no "right way" to do your game. It's more a question of "How do you want your game to work and feel?" and then build to that. I want to stress that: I wasn't suggesting that you shouldn't increase armour DEF. I was merely pointing out what the consequence would be: if that's the style of play you want, go for it! cheers, Mark *Note some GMs don't like "fighters with powers", but honestly, I can't see much practical difference between damage reduction described as "My iron will allows me to shrug off the stun" and damage reduction defined as "My magical power allows me to shrug off the stun".

Be aware of what that will mean though: if armour is commonly available, it's going to give you a game with a kind of "A-team" feel, where people battle with lethal weapons, but few people die or even get seriously hurt: a 50% boost means a person in plate will be completely immune to physical damage from a heavy longbow - even a hit to the head with a max damage roll will just leave him with some superficial bruising and a bit of headache (though he'll almost certainly be KO'ed). Even chain mail will stop all physical damage from most blows - a strong man with a greatsword is only going to have about a 30% chance to inflict any lasting harm through chain mail and would require on average about 13 hits to kill an ordinary man in chain: his target is likely to be unconscious long before he's taken any serious damage. A chain vest upgraded by 50% will bounce a ballista bolt without any lasting injury to the person inside about 30% of the time and on average, you'd need to hit someone in chain with 5-6 ballista bolts to kill them. If you let combat luck stack, these effects will be more extreme ... Interestingly, since the PCs will want to boost their attacks as high as possible to cope with increased armour values, it will make unarmoured combat absolutely lethal to anyone without 2 levels of combat luck. We've actually been there - we stopped allowing combat lack to stack after one PC in plate harness charged down a unit of about 100 longbowmen. Of all the arrows that hit him, most pattered off his armour like so much light rain. None did BOD, most did little if any STUN: the archers (sensibly) fled from this apparently invulnerable attacker (I should note we used hit locations, which meant that many arrows hit his limbs, doing essentially no damage through the combination of armour, combat luck and his own PD). Ninja-bear's example makes this point: the Darien the Bold character is a 150 point PC, specialized in swordplay (martial arts). Using his standard equipment (Broadsword and shield) vs. a foe in "upgraded" chain mail, he is going struggle to wound his opponent. If he takes a bastard sword and goes all-out, he's got a good chance of wounding, but he's going to have to nickel and dime his opponent to death - average hits are only going to do 1-3 BOD - even a maxed-out roll on his all-out attack is only going to be lethal if he gets a head hit. Now, of course if you're planning a high fantasy game where the opponents are not other humans, but demons or arch sorcerors, this might be entirely appropriate. But it's good to be aware that what look like minor tweaks can have a major effect on play dynamics. cheers, Mark