Markdoc

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition? Depends on the characters, of course. Obviously not. Depends on the wizard or the demon - if a succubus/incubus is involved, probably a lot. And in one of our games (run by Mike Surbrook) it ran the other way - a lonely demonness fell for my high COM male character ... hijinks ensued Link - NSFW http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/4/1/ Depends on the druid's inclinations and whether s/he's in Bear-form or not

Re: Counters to problems? (Such as AoE spam and magic overuse) Your interpretation is incorrect. The rules you quoted make it clear that it's an issue to be aware of, but it's not a "do not use!" suggestion. The fantasy hero rulebook not only includes sample magic systems using multipowers, such as Eldritch Lore and Vandsarjak, but specifically suggests guidelines for using multipowers in Heroic level fantasy (from page 136 :"Power Frameworks usually only apply to Fantasy Hero campaigns in the context of magic systems — in some games, spellcasters can buy their spells in Power Frameworks, or define a specific spell with multiple applications as a single Power Frame- work. See page 239 for further discussion. If the GM allows spell- casters to have at least some types of Power Frameworks, he may also want to consider letting characters with other types of mystic abilities have Frame- works, too. For example, a “mystic martial artist” character might create a Multipower of Hand- To-Hand Attacks to represent various martial arts strikes." There's a more detailed discussion of power frameworks on pages 239-241, as noted. So, yeah, there's nothing in the rules to suggest that using multipowers in fantasy hero is non-no - merely that giving them only to mages can create balance issues. There are several threads on this forum discussing exactly these issues. cheers, Mark

Re: Counters to problems? (Such as AoE spam and magic overuse) We've been using multipowers for many, many years, in heroic level fantasy. It's not a problem - as long as your magic system is set up properly (and by "properly" it means "to give the feel that you want". cheers, Mark

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition? Alas, that hypothesis hits the rock of "It's important to the players in my group, half of whom are female" and sinks. So no, that ain't it. Further counter-evidence is that females playing male characters, males playing male characters, males laying female characters* and females playing female characters, have all, at times shown interest in COM for both PC and NPC, so it does not seem to have any clear gender bias. With the possible exception of * where I have noticed a tendency to higher COM scores. My own experience is that it's important to games (and thus gamers) where social interaction plays a major role. That's borne out to some extent by the fact that in our supers games, which were mostly beating up bad guys, COM was never really an issue, and where Mind Control was a superior substitute for a hot bod and a nice smile. However, it did become something people spent points on - the same people, I should note - when we played heroic level games, where social interaction became a much bigger part of the game. Looking at the comments here and in previous threads, that seems to be borne out. The people who confidently (and wrongly) state "Costs noting, does nothing" or "There are no rules for it" seem to be mostly gamers who focus more on the combat aspect of the game. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Armor And END Oh, 18 *is* pretty nasty - but then that was the end of a campaign where we played 2-3 times a month and which lasted for 4 years, so that's what? 120 sessions? I do recall that particular character amassed over 180 XP, which fits pretty well with my 1-2 Xp per session average. The PCs went from schlub retainers to a powerful lord to the court officers and generals of the lord's son, and feared martial artists of great repute. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Armor And END

Re: Real Armor And END Like the others, I simply use the encumbrance rules and just whack on LTE if the characters persist in doing things like taking long walks in the very hot sun in heavy armour. That seems to work pretty well: when the players, long ago got access to full harnesses, they schlepped them around in their ship, but rarely ever used them - for adventure-y stuff they used lighter, more flexible armours. Recently, they finally got their hands on magic armour which they think is just the most awesomest stuff ever - and indeed, it's already saved their life many times over. It's still DEF 8 just like a regular full harness. But it doesn't have the "real armour" limitation and thus is near weightless and non-encumbering. The same was true in the last campaign: the characters used battle armour during the actual war, but for the bulk of the campaign, used light armour, or none at all. cheers, Mark

Re: Here be dragons... or Dragon?

Re: Subtle Fantasy Yeah, the whole Æsir/Vanir thing is kind of messed up, because the fragments of the legends we have left totally contradict each other. For example, in the Poetic Edda, the first man is supposed to have been Bor (or Bur or Buri) - his sons were Odin, Vili and Vé. In this version, the Æsir were the sons of the first man. But in another legend, the three of them make the first humans out of two trees - the man Ask and the woman Embla. But just to confuse things, in the introduction the Völusp‘a, (where the above legend is related) the listeners (ie: human audience) are referred to as "the sons of Heimdallr"! - and he's thought to have been one of the Vanir. If that's not enough the Vanir and the Æsir make a man (Kvasir) together. So there you have it: the gods are the sons of men - or made men - or both. The only thing we can be clear on is that the Æsir and Vanir were about the same level of power - the Vanir breached the walls of Asgard and rampaged around Odin's house before agreeing to a peace treaty, even before you go into that whole marrying thing. cheers, Mark

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition? Exactly. As I commented to the OP, moving COM from a standard part of the character to an optional extra was predicted to mean that physical appearance would essentially cease to become a significant factor in games. It could not really be otherwise, so it's no surprise that that is what we are seeing. Even though COM has always played a noticeable part in our games, I should point out that it's not that big a deal: it can easily enough be houseruled back in. From a game design point of view, though, I think it's the one decision that can unambiguously described as poor: retaining COM cost the game system nothing more than 3/4 of a square centimeter of a character sheet, removing it is having the effect debated on this thread. Essentially, we lost functionality without any offsetting gain. There are other changes in 6E that I don't particularly care for, but in every other case I can think of, I can see the merit in the counterarguments. cheers, Mark

Re: Paladin's Horse

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition? But it was never useless in our games - as noted in the long-running COM debate, it certainly had multiple potential effects (indeed, 5E included games rules for the mechanical effects). The debate seems to run: "COM has no effects!" "Sure it does, here's the rules" "Oh, we never use those...." Anyway, that debate seem to have run its course. I'm still pondering if we'll move to 6E and if we do, whether to add COM back in - but I'll finish the current game first. cheers, Mark

Re: Paladin's Horse After one too many warhorses turned to fine ash under my saddle by a fireball that only lightly singed me, I dealt with that by capturing a Tyrannosaurus (it's technically an animal, so "charm animal" spells work) and then having my magic-user friend polymorph it into a horse. Woot! A 16HD warhorse! It was a bit rough on stable-boys though ..... Cheers, Mark

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

Re: New to running a Fantasy Hero game Like the rest of the comments I tend to give 1-2 per session, 3 if it really rocked. With a slower rate of advancement, characters tend to spread their points, buying up languages, knowledge skills, etc, to cope with the changing campaign landscape. cheers, Mark

Re: Pole Arm Quiz 14 out of 22. And they're right - I not only read that book, I coveted it when I was a kid cheers, Mark

Re: Tenure as a perk I wouldn't even call it a perk. Speaking from experience "being tenured" actually gives you very little. It provides pretty good protection from being fired - but then, so does a decent contract. It doesn't - for example - protect your salary, your access rights, your seniority, any of that stuff. And it's a negative right. You don't actually get anything except a warm fuzzy feeling of security from being tenured*. Two examples - one from my own workplace, one from UCLA. In the first case, a tenured researcher was deemed "unproductive". Rather than going to the hassle of firing her, they cut all her funding, assigned her lab and support to other scientists and when that didn't do the job took away her office. Since she had nothing left to do but hang around in the hallways, she soon left. In the second case, a university hospital wanted to reduce headcount for economic reasons. Again, rather than fire tenured professors, they simply cut their salary by 90% and told them to make the rest up out of grants. So it protects you from being on the "at-will" firing line, and gives you some boasting rights, but that's about it. cheers, Mark *well, some places it affects your pension rate calculation ...

Re: Using a D20

Re: Mad Cult-Leader of the Elder God of Pestilence You could go here and get my Grimoire, which has a bunch of illness-associated powers. I haven't gotten around to updating it for 6th, yet, but the changes needed would be minor, and thanks to Fitz, there are HDC files to make that task even easier. Here's a sampler: PLAGUE This is the spell for which the plague priests are most notorious, and the primary reason they are hunted down relentlessly by all good and moral people. Casting this ritual creates a highly virulent disease that will spread by contact until the entire population is infected, or all the diseased hosts have expired. Some of the beings will be naturally immune to this disease, while others acquire immunity only after surviving the sickness. After each 5 hour period the disease is in effect, the victim can make a recovery roll to try and shake off the infection. Once the illness has passed, however, the victim will still require several days of bed rest before he has returned to full health. The mage who casts this spell has no immunity to the disease and he will likely flee the area immediately after the ritual is completed. The disease effects only members of a single species, determined when the spell is first mastered, but can be spread by a specific type of vermin, such as a rat or insect. Dead victims of this plague can still serve as carriers, and if their corpse is later dug up the disease can spring to life once more. For this reason, most plague victims are cremated en masse. A worthy sacrifice on an altar of evil is required to initiate this spell, along with a member of the target species to serve as the initial plague carrier. Power: 2d6 BODY Drain (Plague) Specific Modifiers: Recover 1 per hour (+1), 0 END (+1), Persistent (+½), Continuous (stops if victim makes 8- Recovery roll after each BODY Drain, only while still alive, +1), Uncontrolled (+½), Sticky (Can be carried by host species and a single species of vermin) (+½); 14- Activation Roll (-½), Recovery roll or activation failure makes target immune to this spell thereafter (-¼), Drain only effects specific target species (-½), Costs END to cast (-¼), No Range (-½), OAF Major Sacrifice on Altar, immobile (-2-½), Gradual Effect (every hour) (-1), Extra Time: 1 hour (-2 ½). Active Cost = 165 points. END Cost: 16; Magic Roll: -16; Casting Time: 1 hour.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Ok, that made me laugh: nice pic! You should see if the AARP is interested in the rights! cheers, Mark

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't? Just a comment, the slave soldiers like Mamluks and Jannisaries were possible because their owners (the work Mamluk actually comes from classical arabic for "owned") selected them from foreigners (who weren't much liked by the locals), gave them privileges that made the locals even less impressed with them and then set them up in mutually balancing factions. They also typically recruited them as children and trained them up from youth. So yeah, you could take a sword to your owner (and actually, that did happen on occasion) but if you did, you were hundreds if not thousands of miles from home, probably not exactly clear in where home was to start with, surrounded by a populace who hated your guts and rival slave soldier factions who also hated your guts! If, on the other hand, you put up with it, you were fed well, housed well and protected by your owner, plus you had an esprit de corps that gave you trusted comrades. It doesn't sound like a great deal to us, but in the context of the time, it clearly worked ... well, most of the time. The German Ministerales are a bit of a different case. They weren't in any sense of the word slaves, and we know that some aristocrats voluntarily became ministerales. They were weren't free - but they were still considered gentry, and had extensive legal privileges and protections. They're a good example of how convoluted (to our eyes) medieval society could be. cheers, Mark

Re: New to running a Fantasy Hero game When setting up a game I always work from the bottom upwards. Work out - just generally - a generic city guard, a generic soldier, a generic knight or samurai, etc. Then work out where you want your PCs to sit in the game universe. If a city guard is 10 points of powers and skills, a competent 150 point PC warrior will be able to slaughter several squads of guards in a straight fight. If they're 100 points, he'll find one a serious threat. The first will give you a Conan-like PCs, the second, more "Thieves' World" types at 150 points. Then scale the points for PCs to whatever level you want the game to be. cheers, Mark

Re: 4E D&D Converstion Well, first off, I wouldn't use it myself: a D&D combat round is almost the same as a Hero Turn and most people already get multiple attacks in that period. Add to that the fact that many things that give attacks of opportunity in D&D lower your DCV in Hero, and there is already a mechanism for "This makes you more vulnerable in combat". But secondly, if you do want it, I'd make a simple house rule and save the power builds like triggered attacks for people who buy Feats like combat reflexes, etc that let you do more AoOs. Here's a suggested houserule. Since everyone gets one (but only one) AoO per round in D&D, even if they can take multiple "actions" (free, swift, movement and attack), I'd suggest "When an opponent takes an action (or is subject to an effect, like falling to the ground) that lowers their DCV against you, you may - once per turn - take a free attack, called an attack of opportunity". That's not precisely the same as D&D, but gives something of the same feel, without being over-powering. Characters who want Feats that build off AoO like step up or opportunistic tactician, can build them with points and the guy who wants "combat reflexes" can build a triggered attack that lets him whack people all around him when they drop their guard. cheers, Mark

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't?