Markdoc

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Good points, all. Just a couple of comments. We've never had a problem with "Starcastles" because every GM I have played with (and me) would have no problem rejecting such a character as "stupid". I agree that combat spells are not the real game wreckers - in addition to your list I'd add clairsentience, N-ray vision, Mind-link and Teleport, but as a GM, I can live with these. You simply need to be aware that such spells exist and design your game (and scenario) to match. In many cases, this means departure from "fantasy norms" for me. In civilized countries, for example castles are out - tall walls do not give security in a high fantasy world, where heroes can fly, teleport or see through them. A military base in such a country looks more like a cross between a 17th century fort and a modern firebase. As for the spell discount thing, I'd take issue with the 90% cost break for multipowers, since you have to pay for the reserve, and since it is usually difficult to whack all the limitations of a spell on a reserve, the cost break works out typically to around 60-70%. I'm guessing this is where the "divide by three" idea came from, even though it's a dreadful kludge, because it lacks even the balancing weaknesses of a MP. It does seem to have been a problem - one of the online games I played in broke down because the "divide by three" mages so clearly overpowered everyone else and one poster earlier in this thread made the same comment. For Frameworks, my approach has been: ECs I have used very rarely. The reasons are simply that it's unusual for a mage to have all his spells about the same size - which was required - and I am also wary of a mage who can have multiple powerful spells active at once. Multipowers. I've used these a lot. The limiting factors I put in place are that spells are almost exclusively built as ultras and not scaleable. So in general, you have a choice of using two or more weaker powers or one big power - meaning you can be nigh-invulnerable or have a good attack - but not both at once. VPP. I use this almost as much as MPs. Again, however, I require spells to be pre-builds, in most cases. This saves time at the table since there is no buggering about with "configuring your pool". You can have up to your active points running at any one time and the active points are clearly laid out on the character sheet. It's a case of "pick a spell or three". With this approach, characters with VPPs run pretty much like MPs, just with potentially infinite slots and the ability to run several powers at once. However the inability to limit pool cost decreases the amount of raw power they can manage. More importantly, for all the different magic systems I wrote up I set up "rules of magic". By its very nature, magic in my game must take the minimum limitations: Extra time - full phase, Concentration (to cast) half DCV, Requires a skill roll and Custom modifier: Requires LTE (all spells must require at least END to cast and that END is LTE). Those limitations mean that magic in combat is a dodgy business - if you have use a full phase to switch slots, and be at half DCV during that process, it severely limits your HTH options. You can still build a very effective combat mage, if that's your thing, but you require some build-up time to get all your buffs running. If you are burning LTE, you can only cast so many spells in a limited period of time. This reduces the use of the mage as artillery support. Further, I tend to build all spells myself (players can and do request new spells, but any player-initiated spell is built as cooperative venture) and thematically limit schools of magic, so it's hard, if not impossible, to build a mage who's "good at everything". As a result, mages are an essential part of any adventuring party, but they tend to be very different. In the current game we have a weather mage and a healer. Earlier we had a warrior-mage. All of these have been a major addition to the party and all filled different roles in the party. In addition, none of them - even the warrior mage - replaced the rogue or the fighters. He functioned more as a specialist, who could harm things they could not ordinarily touch, but wasn't as good against mundane opponents. When it comes to combat, the healer-mage gets out his sword and shield and wades in with a blade. He's not as good as the dedicated fighters, but he's learned it's the most effective way for him to fight. When infiltration is needed, the weather mage can help set things up - but it's the rogue type who actually goes over the wall. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Right, all of these suggestions that "Warriors are weaker, so give them more freebies" can be simply short-circuited by setting up your game so that, if you want warriors, they are not necessarily weaker. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? That's actually a fair point: there is precisely one situation where magic users can be underpowered and that's where spells are bought outside a framework (ie: at full cost) and mages attempt to duplicate free gear with spells (in other words, the mage attempts to buy spells that give him an RKA and armour, instead of using the free stuff and buying spells to do what mundane equipment can't). We have actually had a few posts from players who have attempted to do that, but to be fair, they were totally new to the system. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #1: The Cover!

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Well with unified power, you can do most of what you did with ECs. In general, though, I would strongly agree with you, but with the caveat that because the non-mage with a MP is more specialised, that addresses the balance issue to a large extent: the mage can do far more, but in certain situations - like combat - a specialist can outshine them, because they can build the MP to play to that one strength. I also agree you need to hobble mages to some extent to compensate for this flexibility. I address this issue in my games by requiring magic to take certain limitations (For example, all magic requires "Mana" which is equivalent to LTE: so mages can't go 'round lit up like a magical christmas tree with all sorts of buffs 24/7, all magic requires skill rolls so it is rarely 100% reliable, etc). That seems to work pretty well, across a range of power levels and settings. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? First off, they are both quite nice characters But looking at those two characters, the wizard is going to clean the fighter's clock, if he has the brains god gave to goats. His forcefield gives excellent protection to the fighter's ranged attack and gives him decent protection against his HTH attacks, he has a mental attack which should give him a significant edge in misdirection (and it's an easy hit at any range) even if he can't completely dominate the fighter. He's faster (in terms of movement) so he should be able to keep his distance in combat and reach places where the fighter can't get to him - and with the use of one spell, he ends up with a ranged DCV far superior to his opponent. He can blind him with Flash and then head shot him with his RKA, he can entangle him in his own armour or clothes and use the time to move away or just drain his speed down to nothing while he's fighting his way out (the entangle won't protect against a drain). He can entangle him and then lift the helplessly entangled fighter high into the air long before he can tear his way free .... The mage doesn't have one attack - he has 8! In fact he has a lot of combat options and they are all good - plus he has options for escape, should he need it. The fighter is powerful close up, but at range his CV is going to end up far worse than the wizard's, so he's going to be wearing a lot of hits . At range, even the wizard's standard zap does more damage - and the light crossbow puts the poor old fighter at half DCV and takes a full phase to reload! Sure, the wizard will run out of END, but the fighter will probably be long dead by then. No question, the wizard is a far more powerful and flexible combatant. He's weak in HTH, and I like the fact that his spells have extra time (it reinforces the fact that he's no HTH combatant) but the fighter really has to be able to ambush him in a location where he can't escape, to have a good chance. Plus the wizard is far more flexible generally: no question he's a more useful/powerful character. And these guys are just starting out. For the fighter to get +1 to hit is going to cost him three points. The wizard gets 3 more spells of this level for that cost. In just a few adventures the wizard will have increased his versatility and usefulness significantly, while the fighter will have changed slightly, if at all. You're kind of making my point here. The wizard is a highly effective combatant, who can do a lot of other cool stuff. The fighter is just as effective in HTH combat - and that's it. cheers, Mark

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them?

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book

Re: I wonder how much Antique's Roadshow would appraise it for... More to the point, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (who counts as an authority since he made a lot of the legends about Arthur up himself, or at least wrote down other people's made-up legends) Belinus "founded was a certain city on the bank of the River Usk, near to the Severn Sea; this was the capital of Demetia (nowadays South Wales) and for a long time it was called Kaerusc. When the Romans came the earlier name was dropped and it was re-named the City of the Legions, taking its title from the Roman legions who used to winter there." The city at that site is today known as Caerleon. So there you have it. cheers, Mark

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book At the moment? No contest - attacking bases and tankers, hands down. It's currently technically impossible to jam tight beam frequency shifting communications. All of which is beside the point I originally made, which is that both unmanned and manned combat aircrafts have their weaknesses and strengths. cheers, Mark

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book Ah - I see your difficulty - you haven't read the study. We're not talking some hypothetical attack on the US or similar, but an analysis of the likely battle space in a specific conflict. Here's the RAND study. They were analyzing a "pacific conflict" (basically a US defence of Taiwan). The US fighters/Fighter bombers deployed are likely to have a significant edge in technology, but a significant disadvantage in numbers. To counter that weakness in numbers and the advantage the chinese have in air bases requires the US fighters to operate over longer distances and to operate for longer on station, made possible by the use of in flight refuelling. A numerically stronger foe can afford to engage your fighters, accept their losses and deploy extra forces against your support - in this case, the tankers and take them out. If you don't deploy your in flight tankers, your options become even worse: you can only deploy a portion of your force, increasing the enemy's numerical superiority in the battle space. So no, the USAF aren't idiots - but forward operations require potentially exposing support assets due to the limited range of current stealthed fighters. That's a risk that some day might have to be taken. Likewise, although detecting and jamming a frequency-hopping signal to multiple stealthed targets isn't the easy task you seem to think it is, it's always possible that the technology to do that might be developed some day. In short, both options offer some advantages, and some risks. In many ways, a larger fleet of UACVs may be a lower risk/higher return strategy. cheers, Mark

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book In what way? cheers, Mark

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book Yup - or hacking it. But with modern fighters, you have the same sort of problem with attacks against support facilities - look at the controversial RAND corporation simulation where Chinese Sukhoi fighters defeated a force of F22s: not by beating the F22s, but by swarming their tankers, rendering the F22s unable to return to base. Like everything in war, you need to look at trade-offs. cheers, Mark

Re: Taranis-The British plane that deserves to be in a comic book

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans. They're amazingly similar, with the same basic plotline (reluctant hero finally embraces destiny, kills monster, end with ridiculously excessive self-gratification sequence). Alice at least had a decently amusing villainess, while Clash had a cool Medusa, but I'm glad I didn't pay to see either. But why is it all big Hollywood movies these days seem to be scripted by the same not-particularly-gifted 12-year old? cheers, Mark

Re: Looks Like a Spaceship, Don't It? As for the plane itself, it looks cool, but will never be built: it's pointless. The "sonic boom" effect and resulting law was simply a way for Congress to stop Concorde from selling their planes to US domestic carriers. Concorde was operated over heavily populated areas in Europe for years with nary a problem and the US routinely permits supersonic flight by military craft inside the US. Given all that - and the economic failure of Concorde - why spend billions to develop a plane with a limited market and no real technological requirement to exist? Cheers, Mark

Re: Welcome to McGuffins. May I take your order? Yup, in the novels (which are really quite different from the movies) it's actually used by Svetlana to rewrite the destiny of Egor (Anton's son who would otherwise have become a powerful dark magician) without changing the entire history as they did in the movie. In addition I like the vignette in the movie where Anton discovers the chalk of destiny is being used by the old asian (who I think is Tamerlane, though that's not made explicit) to write orders in his cafe! cheers, Mark

Re: Request: pointers to history books I ran a short Victorian era "pulp" game set in India/Afghanistan a while back (Colonel Carruther's Colonial Company) inspired by all the Ripping Yarns I read as a kid. Some of the web sites I found useful were: http://www.victorianstation.com/empire.htm http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/High-Tech/victorian_guns.html http://www.nagssociety.com/products/products.htm http://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/india.htm http://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/india/indiamaps.htm http://www.museumindocklands.org.uk/English/Learning/Teachers/resources/victorian.htm http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/worldcity/vr/ and last, but far from least: http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/carnacki.htm Which has nothing to do with India, but had quite a lot to do with my game If you have a fast connection, I can recommend the estimable Constable's Hand Atlas of India, which has more maps than you can waggle a lathi at, if you take my meaning, eh what? http://www.archive.org/stream/constableshanda00songoog#page/n7/mode/1up It includes shipping routes, travel times, railways, colonial police stations and army barracks, etc etc. There were also two excellent "Victorian adventure" sites but alas, they were on Geocities and are now gone the way of all flesh. Last of all, I found plenty of inspiring photos and images on various colonial wargaming sites, plus some useful scenario ideas. You can just google up a bunch of them including some steampunk victorian games. cheers, Mark