Markdoc

Re: Narf's Fantasy Stuff

Re: Narf's Fantasy Stuff My suggestion is to trim his martial arts back and spend the points elsewhere (fighting tricks, perhaps, or more raw speed). As it stands, he's a pretty expensive character, but not terribly effective (points wise) in combat. He's more or less helpless if blinded or grabbed, he's easily tripped, apart from with his greatsword he has a low CV (against an archer he might as well have a giant target painted on his forehead), etc. In general, combat ability starts to take a serious dive if you spend much more than 20 points on martial arts maneuvers and he's more than double the "way too many maneuvers" break point. I understand you want all those maneuvers for flavour, but it does hurt your attempt to build "a no-powers, no-magic, Standard Heroic combat character that can stand with the deadliest without fear". He dishes out a a heck of a lot of damage and could probably one-shot kill lots of characters, - but he has a max OCV of 10, and when he's doing that he has a DCV of 4, meaning even my current party's doddering old wizard can hit him on a 13 or less. cheers, Mark cheers, Mark

Re: Narf's Fantasy Stuff Why not just use "Independant?" That's precisely what I do in my game and it's worked well. cheers, Mark

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery Yeah, I think we are talking about two different things. I was replying in answer to the word "duel" - meaning a fight set up by both sides in advance. Armour's not impossible there (medieval knights dueled in armour sometimes). If, on the other hand, you were expecting a fight, then I'd expect people (including PCs) to wear armour if they had it. cheers, Mark

Re: New Robert E Howard collection As an aside, Howard wrote some similar stories to the tales of "the pastry" featuring a hero called Kirby O'Donnell - I have them in a book called Swords of Shahrazar, and actually prefer them to the El-Borak tales (possibly because O'Donnell seems to me to be a bit less of a prig) - anyway I used Swords of Shahrazar as the basis for a whole series of adventures in my long ago Fantasy Hero game. Despite being indubitably pulp, they are trivially easy to convert to a fantasy setting. cheers, Mark

Re: New Robert E Howard collection Or just made it up - in 1930's America, how many pulp readers would have known/cared? The commonest Arabic for "the Eagle" would be al-Nasr, I think, but anyway, I was mostly making fun. Borak (borek, borecki, boregi etc) is the turkish-derived name for a yummy pastry filled with cheese (or potato and cheese) , mincemeat, etc common across the Balkans, Turkey and as far east as Iraq (and maybe further, I don't know). Al-Borak actually means "the lightning" or "the swift" and is a) a female name and the name of a magical flying horse with a womans' head in popular arabic mythology (which is where I'm guessing REH dug it up). It's pretty unlikely anyone would have hung it on a guy, especially a guy who could punch your teeth right down your throat! cheers, Mark

Re: Environment Fighters I'd float this idea to him and see if he likes it. If so, it'd require a 30 point VPP to generate +2d6 KA which (in total) would cost him 30 + control cost of 7 (limited class of powers and OIF) for 37 points. What I'd do as GM is rather than change the character suddenly, simply let him save up the difference in points and then convert over. However, on thinking about it, this is probably an unnecessarily complex way of doing things: he needs some sort of a power skill roll (a survival roll?) to change his powers in combat, when all he is actually doing is picking up something and whacking somebody with it, most of the time. A cheaper (and easier) route would be a multipower instead. In that case it looks like: Environmental edge: Multipower reserve - 30 points, all powers take OIF (objects of opportunity) real cost 20. Slot 1 (u) +2d6 HKA. real cost 2. So he would have the same combat ability as now (with one caveat - it now costs him END to use objects) at a cost of 2 extra points. The advantage is that he can then add those extra powers I suggested at 1 or 2 points a pop as he earns experience. Anytime he comes up with a nifty new idea, it costs him relatively little to add it to his repertoire. This is not too powerful (it's only a 30 point MP) but gives him a great deal of flexibility. You can modify to taste - if he wants to add "requires a survival skill roll to activate" then he could (for example) increase the reserve to 45, get his 2d6 HKA at 0 END and keep the price down to 22. cheers, Mark

Re: (Equipment) Axe vs. Sword

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery Depends on where you were obviously, but yes, in many (pre-victorian) cultures, parading around naked would get you thrown in jail - in the medieval period, pretty much anywhere from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, north of the Sahara would qualify. Recall that in parts of medieval Europe it was illegal for some classes of women to go out without a headscarf - let alone showing any flesh. In 15th century Denmark, Copenhagen's sumptuary laws not only specified why certain classes could (or could not) wear but also specified what people who live din certain parts of teh town must wear. Failure to comply could be punished by jail, by a severe beating with a heavy wooden pole or - in some cases - by branding on the face! Going around naked was definitely not a legal option, even if you disregard the risk of frostbite. Compared to medieval central european cultures, the Victorians come across as "refreshingly relaxed" That said, I was mostly just poking fun at the idea that somebody would own armour but no clothes, which has already been done. cheers, Mark

Re: Placed shots effective? That's funny - my players do it regularly. There are times when it's a good idea and times when it's not. But it's a really, really useful tool. cheers, Mark

Re: New Robert E Howard collection Yep, I'll buy that. I have a couple of those stories, but they have been hard to get for years. It's just kind of sad that the hero is named after a cheese pastry, but hey... cheers, Mark

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery In that case he would already be in jail for parading around in the nude - one can't wear armour without some kind of clothes underneath and one can't wear it all the time. cheers, Mark

Re: Sherlock Holmes (movie 2010) Yeah: one point that people tend to forget - in the 1890's steam was king and London was the centre of the biggest industrial power in the world. Put those two together and you get pollution. Big time pollution. You think Mexico City has bad pollution? That' ain't but nothin' compared to Victorian London. So many of the vistas that you see in the film would have been totally impossible in real life: the observatory at Primrose hill in London recorded visibility every day in the mid-late 19th century and over a 12 year period, visibility was above 6 km on only one day. Usually it was less than 3, meaning you could see about 2 miles on a sunny day. In 1901, the London City council did the same thing and through the entire course of 1901, it was not possible - not once - to see from the houses of Parliament to St Pauls. That's less than 2 1/2 kilometres, or about a mile and a half. Often visibility - during the day, mind - was under 1000 metres, meaning you could see a few city blocks and that was it. No wonder the word "smog" was invented in London in 1904. That kind of smog not only means that the scenes of Holmes on top of the bridge would have been impossible - he could not have seen even to the bend in the river - but that kind of smog renders everything filthy. I've been out in smog nearly as horrible in some African cities (Addis is particularly bad these days) and it turns painted walls black in the space of a few weeks. White shirts become grey in the space of a few hours and black around the wrists and collar (there's a reason a Victorian gentleman changed his shirt - or at least his collar - several times a day). As an aside, the bridge the final fight was on top of? My Great-grandad lived there when it was finished: he was charged with lifting the bridge to let ships through. cheers, Mark

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery

Re: Environment Fighters The simplest thing to do with the deadly blow thing is to convert the DC in ordinary damage to killing damage: that's not unreasonable - he knows how to hit where it hurts. Otherwise, it sounds like you are good to go. Another possibility, though, is to replace his Deadly blow with a VPP allowing different powers, all of which require "OIF: suitable object of opportunity". As a start, start him with an HKA and an HA. That means he needs sharp hurty things to do killing damage, blunt objects to use HA. He can use RKA and EB for thrown objects, Flash for gasoline or sand to throw in someone's eyes, an NND to use a hose to garrote someone, etc. The fact that it's a VPP will keep it from getting out of control, but it can be expanded with experience over time. At the same time, it will encourage him to "get inventive" with finding weaponry. cheers, Mark

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery

Re: Sherlock Holmes (movie 2010)

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Re: The Overbearing Presence On thinking about it, my comment might have come across as more sarcastic than intended - that wasn't actually what meant.... My initial reaction to your comment that entangle was "useless" was "Whoa, what? Entangle is the shiznitz" - and then I remembered your earlier stated preference: so I merely meant that "Useless" was too strong a description: it's only useless is certain specific settings. I know what you mean, but I am not sure that everyone else would, necessarily. As for the discussion of PRE, I think one interesting thing has come out of it - we do seem to have come to an more or less general agreement that it is not, in fact, horribly overpowered. It can certainly be nerfed if people spend more on PRE - but then entangle can be nerfed if everyone spends points on STR, mind control can be nerfed if everyone spends points on EGO, etc - and each of those things are useful in their own right. As to alternate approaches, I have pondered them, but haven't come up with anything that isn't annoying cumbersome, ruleswise - mostly my thoughts have tended to wander towards variants on mind control. cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Dunno what it is in English, but in Danish it basically means "God help me!" or "by god!" cheers, Mark

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: Populating and fleshing out Saltmarsh

Re: Collaborative World Ending… Shucks, I'd play this! cheers, Mark