Markdoc

Or you could just accept the low PRE. That would mean that they were actually pretty useless as soldiers unless they were led by a strong leader - or driven by fear, for example an ogre with a spiked whip in the back ranks. That's actually pretty typical for the "dark races" in modern fantasy - without a strong leader, they are, by nature, skulkers. Once the leader is removed the army tends to fall apart. If you want to get detailed, give them a low PRE but also some striking appearance - they are scary to ordinary people, but if challenged by a stronger force, they tend to cower. cheers, Mark

Yeah, I thought about that - but if you drop the minimum, you pay more to get the range you need. I haven't run the numbers, but maybe that would be the cheaper way to do it. cheers, Mark

Do what L. Marcus suggests - and roleplay it. If a character wants to be devout, let them take the appropriate psych. lim.s and roleplay it. Yes, I'm aware that is going to place some weight on the shoulders of both the GM and the player, but it should not be insuperable - we've been dealing with the "Only when serving purposes of the god" limitation for divine spellcasters for years. And honestly, it shouldn't even be a problem: roleplaying hooks should be a good thing. If they're good - and play their PCs that way - then evil things find them hard to tolerate. And honestly, if they're not good, and don't play their characters that way, then letting them say they're good, because they paid 5 points for it ... it just tastes bad. cheers, Mark In our current game, I'm playing a paladin. One of the things I like is how the other players just know "how he is". Recently, we wanted to visit a village rumoured to be plagued by vampires -but without stirring up a fuss. My PC went off and managed to get us a job as caravan guards, so that we could arrive inconspicuously (not difficult: the rumours of vampires had made guards hard to come by). When I came back and announced this to the rest of the group, our sorceror made a disgusted face and said "You didn't even ask him about the pay, did you?" And of course, it hadn't even occurred to me. I'm a paladin! Of course I'll help!

You're making the mistake of treating the description literally. Yes, Arcane mark is a spell. But it has nothing to do with Instant summons, apart from the fact that it is mentioned in the fluff text. That's a pretty good definition of a special effect. Here's the spell description: First, you must place your arcane mark on the item. Then you cast this spell, which magically and invisibly inscribes the name of the item on a sapphire worth at least 1,000 gp. Thereafter, you can summon the item by speaking a special word (set by you when the spell is cast) and crushing the gem. The item appears instantly in your hand. Only you can use the gem in this way. Now I know what arcane mark does. Yeah, you can arcane mark lots of things. For the purposes of this spell that is utterly irrelevant: you can't summon them. (You've misunderstood here: you can't summon any item you have previously arcane marked: only the one the you marked when you cast instant summons). So you have to put an arcane mark on the item you do summon ... and that's also utterly irrelevant, since you have to have access to the item in the first place. You could replace the words "arcane mark" with the words "fluffy kitten" and it would change absolutely nothing in the way the spell functions or the way it is used in-game. Really? Special effect. It does nothing. The Instant Summons spell does one thing, and one thing only: it lets you prepare an item so that you can later summon it to your hand. You need to be able to speak (incantations) and have a diamond (expensive, IAF, consumed with use). You also need access to the item ahead of time, so I guess we're looking at trigger. What you get is access to an item. In a superhero game, I'd agree, it seems like it allows you to dispense with the focus advantage on a power you already have. In a fantasy game where you may not pay points for equipment, that's a little trickier. I'd be inclined to use Teleport, 1 fixed location (caster's hand: locations can be living creatures), Usable as attack, with a 1 turn prep time (which is the ritual with arcane mark and the gem). You'd also want megascale (+2) to cover the whole planet, and transdimensional (+1), plus the limitations Only to a fixed location (-1), only a single marked item of x dimensions (-1) and Not if in the possession of another creature (-1/2). You could, if you really wanted, add "Caster must know arcane mark" but that's such a trivial limitation that I would not give any points for it. As built, that has the bug that the spell does not work if you are closer than 1 km to your object: you could add normal teleport of up to 1 km to the spell, but it's getting pretty expensive as is. cheers, Mark

As Gabriel says when Constantine protests his faith "You don't believe. You know. It's not the same." And as I noted to Lucius, what is "true faith" - even in this limited game setting. It's something that the undead are vulnerable to - that part is easy (it also sounds like a vulnerability). But the other parts that you write (for example) "Only a few individuals in the history of the world have had this level of Faith. Entire religions and offshoots arise in their passing. They can perform miracles daily, are surrounded by Guardians of Light constantly and can destroy Creatures of Darkness with but a glance. These are the individuals to whom the lesser faithful look up to and aspire to be like" Really? I can perform miracles, and gain the adulation of millions, plus a heavenly bodyguard for the cost of +2d6 EB? Hoo boy! Sign me up! This is the problem. Having true faith in itself, actually gives you nothing (well, at least nothing we can measure). It could be that in a tiny village in Macedonia right now, some old woman with perfect faith is drudging through life with a loaned goat and 4 chickens. It's terribly situational and also really hard to define: those are both signs of something that experience says it is a bad thing to try and build as a power. Letting PCs buy it and then treat it the same as acquiring a sidearm, is going to really devalue the entire in-game concept: "True Faith" essentially becomes "Energy blast only vs dark powers". I dunno: I'm just not feeling it. cheers, Mark

I'm a bit iffy about true faith being something that you buy with points, but which is unattached to the PCs behaviour: that means you could have a cheerfully money-lending, whoring, drunken, blasphemous atheist ... with true faith. While I guess in theory you could work out suitable fluff for that, it doesn't seem terribly true to source material cheers, Mark

It's just a special effect to indicate the object that you have tagged. cheers, Mark

That's the case whether it's a susceptibility, or a power which only functions when the PC in question has true faith. In general, the willingness to take on the creatures of darkness armed only with two small bits of crossed wood would imply some sort of faith, though. cheers, Mark

Actually I used them, and one of my GM'ing friend did as well. We had a memorable scenario, where my paladin and his posse pursued an evil-doer into the wilderness. We caught up with him in an area of old graves (think the barrow-downs) but were trapped by a storm, and deep snow. I had to kill my faithful warhorse so that we could survive I will admit though, that that is the exception rather than the rule. My currently most-played character has this resistance to cold thing and although we've been tramping around in snow and ice and even been dunked in the water at midwinter, the issue of exposure has never come up once. cheers, Mark

The way I handle this in my game is similar, with a few catches, designed to make vampirism a curse, not a boon. There's the obvious benefits: faster, stronger, functionally immortal, some shapechanging ability. There's also the obvious downsides - burn up in the sun, need regular fresh blood. I've gone for the traditional idea that to become a vampire you have to actually die from blood drain, and that it takes a few days for the transformation to complete, after which point you rise from the grave (or wherever your body happens to be). This is modelled as a transform, so it takes some time for victims to recover from feeding - if a vampire feeds too frequently on one victim, even if they do not take enough to kill them in one hit, eventually the victim will sicken, die and then rise as a vampire. So for a vampire to feed regularly without killing his victims, he needs a large pool that he can draw on. To that, I add a couple of additional downsides. 1. The blood has to be "living" blood - the vampire is draining off lifeforce, not just protein. Eating a lot of rare steak or sucking on a plasma bag is not going to cut it. 2. You don't get your blood regular-like, you start to rot (dependance). Fresh blood can halt this process, but not reverse it (which is why old vampires tend to look a bit under the weather. Missing one night's feeding might make you a bit pale and gaunt - but miss a night's feeding here or there over the course of years, and it starts to add up). 3. Life-force is a variable quality. A vampire can survive on animal blood, but in doing so, he or she will slowly become more animalistic. If you want to stay truly human-like you need to feed on humans regularly. 4. The urge for blood is more than just the desire for a meal: it's a genuine bloodlust which must be controlled with an iron will, to avoid gorging (this is modelled as a berserk). What this means is that vampires in my game run the gamut from the elegant stalkers of the night to rotting, crazed bloodthirsty monsters with all the manners of a rabid sewer rat. So you can use vampirism as a means to immortality, but to do so, you need a reliable source of victims. That really restricts it to either the really rich (who can buy compliance), or the really violent (who can just force it). And really, given the whole bloodlust thing, nobody ever feels totally at ease next to a hungry vampire I have had the odd "good" vampire in my game, who takes blood without killing their donors and without forcing their compliance, but these restrictions make them pretty rare. I've also had the occasional morally ambiguous vampire who do kill their victims, but only target "evil" victims: so vigilantes with pointy teeth. As far as the law goes, forcing a victim is pretty clearly aggravated assault or attempted murder depending on how much blood they lose. Likewise, if the vampire coerced or hid their condition, it'd be aggravated assault, just as concealing the fact that you have HIV when you have sex, is. On the other hand, as long as the victim is of an age to give legal consent, and knew what they were letting themselves in for, it's possible it wouldn't be a legal problem. The bit about being dead and then getting better is legally thorny one, though. I'm guessing that many jurisdictions would pass laws stating that once you are dead, you are dead, to avoid legal problems about inheritance. Still that opens another can of worms, if you could legally void debts by dying and then coming back. Either way, I'm pretty sure that you would get people trying to weasel around the law by placing their assets in trusts that they could later access or by simply hiding the fact that they were now vampires. cheers, Mark

The takes half damage only applies to weather conditions, not to any attacks (even attacks defined as altering weather conditions ), so I'd go for life support and call it good. regards, Mark

I'd weigh in on the side of a susceptibility/physical limitation. It's far easier than trying to graft an extra power onto other characters/places. regards, Mark

That's going to have pretty major effects: Russia's gone already, so they are out of the picture, but economies across the middle east, parts of Africa and Latin America - not to mention the US southwest, Alaska and Canada - are going to shrink like popped balloons. That's going to add substantially to social and civic unrest on top of that already generated by the war. On the other side, some people are going to get very, very rich off magitech, which mean new corporations and influence groups. I can see two interesting possibilities. If the Seelie were awake to the possibilities of magitech, or were needed to get it working, they might control some of the world's largest companies, a fact which might not be loved by the general population. On the other hand, they come from a feudal culture, and might not have been alive to the ideas of corporations and mass production: if was humans who exploited this, the Fae might feel like part of their birthright has been stolen ... cheers, Mark

Well, assuming that there is no armoury during travel is pretty reasonable given that long period of travel is the default for very many fantasy games. In my last two campaigns, the PCs spent months at a time away from anything that resembled a base, often in hostile, or at least unknown territory, and operated with what they could carry on their back or a light pack animal. Assuming that they somehow have a base where they can stash things that they acquired hundreds of leagues away is .... odd. In one of the two fantasy games I am playing in, the PCs are often away from anything that resembles a base, and not only do we operate with what we can carry on our back, but the GM enforces encumbrance so that we usually travel and fight light. We gave up on pack animals: we just went through those guys like popcorn. In the other game, the PCs are on the move constantly: we've never returned back along our track, and have never had anything that resembled a base. I realise that this is not always the case, but there's no doubt that it's a very common occurrence. The idea that you can just "give" the players a camp where they can stash their stuff ... what happens when they move on again? What happens when they have to run away or walk through a portal and have no opportunity to return to their "base"? How do they shift their mountain of stuff from one "base camp" to another, anyway? I think your suggestions are a perfect example of what I was talking about before: you can force the armoury concept into a game if you want to really work at it, but it almost always generates in-game weirdness and logical (or in this case, logistical) problems. I might be OK with the weirdness, if I could see a reason for it, but so far, nobody has suggested a reason for me to want to do that. Free equipment - acquired, carried and lost/broken/discarded as time goes on seems like a much easier way to handle things. The arguments that in modern games characters can't more easily shift or stash their stuff .... pfft. If characters are going to be heavily armed - and let's face it, that's one of the defining features of PCs - then the argument that having some AK's in the trunk of your car is somehow more awkward than having it slung over your shoulder, is not something that we can take seriously. It is true that the armoury system doesn't always work well in modern games: for example, if the characters have to travel by conventional airline to and from their destination, then they are going to be without their armoury and have no realistic way of adding items to it. But really, pointing out that you can also have problems with the concept in a modern setting doesn't really make it any more desirable. As for the idea that it takes hours to get into a plate harness: I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic, but no, not in real life (or fantasy, for that matter). Having seen it done many times myself, I can assure you it takes around 15-25 minutes, depending on the style of the armour and the skill of the squire. cheers, Mark

And to be fair, the whole "Owing a favour to a powerful interdimensional being" thing was a major theme in that campaign: the overarching themes were "How far will you go for power?" and "Can you use evil powers for good?" cheers, Mark

I don't think it's any more problematic than a regular fantasy game or superhero game, but it is clear that law enforcement is going to be very interested in keeping track of mages and fae, and will almost certainly employ them as well. It's a safe bet that the same is true for the criminal underworld. I think it's also likely that the general population would be strongly supportive of laws regarding registration, etc, given the background of war and loss associated with magic. Cheers, Mark

There's several ways I do this. If the person is contacting a holy or profane patron somewhere, I simply allow people to buy a contact (for a being or group of beings), and the contact defines what kind of information you can get. For example (from my last campaign) two "patrons" associated with the Laughing God are The Duke of Stillness: A Man with leathery skin and a wide mouth full of teeth. He can teach any language and also all spells of Elemental Earth Magic. His magic brings physical change. The Earl of Furor: a man with fiery hair. He floats, never touching the ground, and teaches spells of Elemental air and those nature spells involving weather. Logically enough the Duke of Stillness can answer questions about, language, culture, far places or caverns and buried treasure, while the Earl can answer questions about the skies, weather and any place that can seen from above. The Laughing God himself is the god of worldly power and growing things, so he could answer questions about nobility, forests, etc. All of them are powerful, immortal extradimensional beings, so could probably also give less detailed answers on a wide range of mundane topics. In some ways, this approach is more restricted than the traditional "ask me anything" commune spell, since you can't expect the Earl to know about things hidden deep in the sea, for example. In other ways, it is less restrictive since you get more than a yes or no answer (though the GM could restrict it to that, if he wanted: having the power state "You may ask me the traditional questions three, but be warned I will only answer with a yes or a no" or something similar). You could build the contact the same way for just "a divine power", but to be honest, I find contacting an unnamed being for yes or no answers is bit flavourless compared to summoning The Thief-taker and questioning him about the location of a specific person. For necromancers summoning the spirits of the dead to ask questions, I simply allow them to buy retrocognition, only for events the summoned spirit could know (-1). The key here is that information-gathering spells in my game are designed to make the PCs work for information, and prevent "ask anything" questions, to make the GM's job of keeping the game flowing. Clever players (like me ) can abuse open yes/no questions to (for example) find almost anything easily. In our current D&D game, we self-limit our use of the Commune spell because it drives our GM nuts, but not all players are so self-restrained. cheers, Mark

We know all about you, Robert. We know where you live. We know where you buried the bodies. See, that's what the +30 is for. Cheers, Mark Also, it helped that you put your name and address on your ID

Yeah, I think it looks very promising: it's good enough to make a playable character, but not so good that it would dominate every aspect of the game. One of the keys to making a successful long-lived campaign (IMO) is making magic-users that are useful and powerful and fun to play, but not so powerful that they always have an answer to every problem. You already have the key to the approach, in the way that you set this up - the druid would make a great wilderness companion, but he would not be totally useless in a city. At the same time, a fire mage could bring something to the table that he couldn't, and a biomancer could offer things (like healing) that neither of them do. The other thing I like is to give mundanes something to do: the easiest way to do this is make on-the-fly magic harder to pull off. I use a standard base set of rules in my game which underlie all forms of human magic. There's all kinds of different styles and schools of magic, but they are all subject to these rules (quick copy/paste from my material). "Magic Requires Effort" - all spells must cost END. While it is possible to have spells that have the reduced END advantage, or even persistent spells, they must at least have the limitation "Costs END to cast (-1/4)" in which the END cost is only paid when the spell is cast "Magic Requires Concentration" - all spells must take the "Concentration" limitation to at least the 1/2 DCV (-1/4) level. Manipulation of primal forces is not something to be attempted while you are hopping about. "Magic Requires Time" - all spells must take the "Extra time" - at least a full phase (-1/2). Again: a spell is not something you casually toss off in passing. "Magic Requires Skill" - all spells require the limitation "Requires a skill roll". This is normally INT based, but some schools of magic teach a style that instead is based on EGO. This is particularly true of mages who specialise in illusion or subverting their target's minds. "Magic requires power" - all spells must take the limitation "Requires Mana" (-1/4). The short version is that Mana is equivalent to LTE, so spellcasting can (and often will) exhaust the caster. Once a caster runs out of END, they can use STUN (on a 1:1 basis) to power their magic, and if they run out of STUN, they can use BOD, again on a 1:1 basis - so pushing things to the limit can knock a mage unconscious or even injure them. This severely restricts the number of spells a mage can cast in a short period of time and means that most spells are going to be cast only as a matter of necessity and generally in a careful, deliberate fashion (just like magic in fantasy novels!) The last thing is basic fairness: if mages get to use power frameworks, so do mundanes. A fighter can use a framework to simulate martial arts power, a spy to build talents related to stealth and information gathering. This approach means that mundane characters still have a niche: they may not get as many cool powers, but they don't knock themselves out trying to open a door either This works pretty well and has been tested in multiple campaigns over the last 25 years or so. cheers, Mark

I alluded to one of the problems with the armoury approach in fantasy games but I didn't make it explicit: in modern games, the PCs usually have either a base or a way to schlep a lot of stuff around. In SciFi games, they almost always have at least a way to schlep a lot of stuff around. In fantasy games that is not the default - in fact, it's not even that common, based on my own experience: very often the PCs will come across stuff that they want and logically could carry, but they have neither the possibility to use it without throwing away valuable gear, nor any way to "stash" it somewhere for later use. If the armoury is "whole Army companies worth of weapons" where, exactly is the character carrying it when they're on a two month trek across the wilderness? If you allow them a bag of holding or similar magic answer, then they effectively have all their stuff with them and can swap gear to their heart's content ... but of course you're not really using pools any more, at that point, which begs the question of why you'd bother to simulate a kind of pool that doesn't really mean anything. Note: I'm not dumping on equipment pools as such: there are times when they can work very well. Just sayin' that most fantasy games are not those times. As to the counter question "are games where everyone uses magic bad?" The answer is, obviously, no, of course not. I've had great fun (under both original RQ rules and Hero system) in Glorantha where everyone, pretty much is a magic-user, not just all the PCs. I ran a short, but successful fantasy campaign, where everyone started as a legendary, magic-using immortal. But those are not typical fantasy games. So what I am saying is not "Don't do this". It's more "This is what you will get, if you do this". cheers, Mark

We experimented (a lot) with equipment pools, since long before the idea of equipment pools was published, but depending on how we handled them, they either marginally mitigated the problem of balancing mundane or magical characters, or made it much, much worse. If you allow only mundane items into the pool, then it helps the non-magic-users a bit. It makes less difference to mages since they rely less on mundane equipment. I'd recommend that any GM wanting to use equipment pools in fantasy games to do this. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it does help a teeny bit. I should note here that pools play a much different role in modern or scifi games, where we use them a lot: it’s not that I hate pools. The difference is that in those settings, there is a ton of useful stuff that you can add to them. In a fantasy game, mundane equipment is pretty much limited to tools, weapons and armour (read: small skill bonuses, KA, HA and armour), so mundane characters get much less out of them. On the other hand, if you allow magic geegaws to go into the equipment pool, it tends to exacerbate the mage/fighter imbalance (especially if players can make their own items), precisely because of the appeal of things like the enhancer staff that was linked to. Magic users have such a wide range of available powers, that they can generally make the best use of such things. If general magic stuff can go into the pool, and magic is generally available, then this difference disappears – but of course you again end up with a game where everyone is a magic-user: no fighter in his right mind is going to use his equipment allowance on a horse, which has limited usability, when he could use the same points on a belt of flying, or teleport, which he can get good use out of in practically any situation. Again, I’m stressing that this is not BADWRONGFUN – just that when charging points for equipment (whether you use VPP or not), your choices are between a game where everyone is a magic-user, or games where everyone uses magic. If you want that, it’s cool: but it’s a specific style of play, and GM’s need to know that going in. Mundane characters always have difficulties remaining relevant when magic is in play, and charging points for equipment just makes it even harder for mundane characters to keep up. Added to that, it’s hard for me to see what problem charging points for equipment is intended to address. Again, in modern or scifi games, the problem is obvious: there’s so much attractive equipment, that it’s nice to have some way to balance up a bit what PCs cart around with them – particularly if they have access to a van, or a plane where they can shift hundreds of kilos or even tonnes of gear, so encumbrance becomes a non-issue. In fantasy, there’s really no such issue. Given the problems that charging points for equipment causes, I can’t see what the reason for doing it actually is. I'd be interested to hear from people who have done it, why they've done it and what the outcome was. cheers, Mark

I have a fair amount of experience with this: coming to hero system from Champions, it was how we initially ran all our games. Alas, I have to say it didn’t work very well and despite multiple experiments to try and make it work, we all abandoned the idea after a while. I should say up front, that it can work for certain styles of game, though it gives a very different feeling and playstyle to a “standard” fantasy game. It works fine for one-off games, where you can build the characters to fit with each other. It can also work where everyone is the same kind of character. If you are playing a game without magic, it works OK – everyone has access to the same mundane equipment and what they choose to use helps define their character. Cost is not so much an issue, because it affects everyone in the same way. Likewise, if everyone is a magic-user, it also works fine: then the game plays more like fantasy champions and the cost of mundane equipment doesn’t really matter, because almost no-one will use it. As a side benefit, if you choose to go this route, all your PCs will be magic-users. In our circle of gamers we had 5 GMs all with different play styles and different game worlds. In every case, players who had originally chosen a fighter or rogue-type character dropped it after a few adventures and made a magic-using character. You outline why in your post above: “Using a sword and a dagger would be 13+8=21 points”. That gives that character one – count’em, one – power: HKA. It’s also 3 points less than the initiate pays for his framework of cool powers. If the mundane chooses to add a bow, to give him a tiny bit of flexibility, he’s now paying as much as the initiate – but he’s much less use. The initiate can do a bunch of useful stuff out of combat and in combat can probably kick the mundane’s ass, with careful use of summoned animals, strangling him with handy plants, etc. You can reduce this problem by giving characters a pool to which they can add equipment: that gives them some flexibility, but it’s only a stopgap. Magic can do all kinds of stuff that mundane characters simply cannot replicate (gear or not), and there’s little or nothing that mundanes can do that magic can’t do as well or better. Having a longsword and a greatsword is really not worth much extra points: it’s still an HKA. In contrast, even with the relatively limited powers you have put in the framework, these druids have a wide range of abilities (Summons, for example, is very, very flexible). Using a “pay for everything” approach also adds some peculiar logic kinks to standard fantasy tropes. Treasure-finding is a standard part of most games, and even if it is not in focus (it usually is not, in my games) there’s often magic mcGuffins in play. In a pay as you go game, characters – even using a pool – will often behave in bizarre and illogical ways, driven by the limitation of their pool size. I find the easiest way to avoid a monty-haul campaign is to simply avoid giving away a host of magical gee-gaws: as GM, I get to control what’s fed into the game. On the other side, I have yet to see what advantages a pay-for-everything approach offers to most fantasy games. cheers, Mark

Sure - I'd be happy to pitch in. Regards, Mark

I don't have any idea as to exactly how many countries/kingdoms I have in my fantasy world off the top of my head, but the answer is "very many". What I tend to do, though is set each game in a specific part of the game world so I only have to deal with a few of them. This has the advantage that it keeps the politics to a manageable level, allows me to use a fresh setting for each campaign, but also provides enough continuity that I don't have to start each game from scratch. It has the additional advantage that over time the game world gets more and more detailed . In the last campaign for example, which was called "Seven Kingdoms" there were well .... actually, six kingdoms. Also 1 city state, a loose, rebellious pirate society, a necrocracy and a bunch of unrelated republics, city-states and tribal regions dotted around the periphery that were referred to, but played no actual role - and as such were not detailed. In the campaign before that, there were 4 city states, and again a necrocracy, an empire and a bunch of small barbarian kingdoms around the periphery that played very minor roles. Interestingly the most recent campaign ran in the area that bordered the one before it, and the campaign I am planning for the future will be just over the borders from the most recent one. It wasn't planned like that, but it means that I have a really good idea of the geography and politics of the surrounding areas. cheers, Mark

OK, here's the "reskinning" I did. Bear in mind that this is an example, rather than a finished version: the whole thing is something I whipped up in a couple of hours over beers, after impulsively saying "Heck, I'll run a game!" Characteristics: 1 Xp per point, max 3 Xp on any statistic: Toughness: +3 STR, +3 CON, +1 BOD, +2 STUN Quickness: +1 SPD Combat: +1 OCV, +1 DCV Smartness: +4 INT, +2 PER (all senses) Career: Samurai (3 Xp) +1 with all combat, Perk: Samurai (right to mete out low justice), FAM : Common melee weapons, Common missile weapons, Riding, High Society and KS/PS: Heraldry, classical literature, calligraphy. Ninja (3 Xp) FAM : Common melee weapons, Common misile weapons, common martial arts weapons, Garrote, Blowgun, Fumiki Bari. Acrobatics, Breakfall, Climbing, Concealment, Disguise, Stealth, Security Systems. Warrior Monk: (2 Xp) FAM : Common Melee weapons. Perk: Priest (right to shelter and perform ceremonies). KS: Buddhism or Shintoism (11-) Martial arts (+3d6 HA) "Feats" Cost 1 Xp Skilled combatant: +1 with all combat - can take up to 3 times. Disarm: +4 OCV with Disarm, +4 STR (only for disarm) Grapple: +4 OCV with grapple, +4 STR (only for grapple) Evasive: +2 DCV Archer: +5 range skill levels with Bow Arrow-cutting: 4 DC damage negation (only vs missiles, requires weapon of opportunity) Cost 2 Xp Dirty Trick (throwing dirt or sand, etc): +4d6 Flash Iron Will: 50% damage reduction physical, resistant, requires an Ego roll Lightning Strike: Naked advantage, autofire for attacks of up to 8 DC etc - I haven't listed all of these, I made up a list of about 20 feats! But this gives you the idea. Also, I did not provide the players with mechanics, just a general description. Iron Will, for example was described as "potentially shrug off some damage from an attack". Lightning strike was described as "attack multiple adjacent opponents at a penalty" The idea was to get the players to focus on what they wanted to do: I handled the mechanics myself directly. Since the game was a simple one, without magic, it was pretty straightforward - I made a short 1 page summary of the feats listing the general mechanics for my own use. With a bit more preparation you could fairly easily "simplify" Hero system for your own game, emphasizing the bits you wanted, without changing any of the mechanics. cheers, Mark