Markdoc

Re: Find Weakness, again

Re: Beholder Yeah, I feel that too (as does our GM. who likes to write errata into her books - she filled the 4E books with snide comments). That said, I commented in the 4E thread, that I suspected 4E was targetted to a real market, and it looks like that's the case. 4E's print run was (according to WOTC) 50% bigger than that for 3.5 and it sold out in record time. The 4E D&D core book set went to #2 on Amazon and stayed in the top 10 for a couple of months. Note, that's top 10 for all books, not just rpgs or fantasy. So it looks like 4E qualifies as a bona fide blockbuster. Yep, he cast his net far and wide for stuff, but as far as I know the Beholder is, if not Gygax's, at least from his gaming group. It's a WOTC copyrighted monster (not available under the Open Gaming Licence) which further suggests it's original. And in answer to your original question about how much you can re-imagine the beastie, it looks like WOTC has removed most of the "flavour" from the current version, but it remains identifiably a Beholder. cheers, Mark

Re: Beholder They streamlined the entire game system: basically almost all spells, attacks, etc either do HP damage or move a character for combat advantage. Our D20 group looked at the rules and decided it wasn't for us, but the intent was clearly to simplify - to remove things that needed to be looked up. There's no more saving throws (in the classic sense) no odd power descriptions that are hard to interpret, etc. Damage, healing and movement: that pretty much covers all combat. I think they've done a pretty good job - it's just that they've produced a well designed game I don't want to play. OTOH, it does look like it'd be easy to transition players who have never played an FRP before, if they had played video games, and I guess that was the design goal. cheers, Mark

Re: The Knife of the Horseman That's how I'd do it ... if I bothered to do it at all This is one of those treasures that most players would leave lying on the table - or maybe use once - to eat Llawfrodedd's other treasure - one of the three prominent cows of Britain. This doesn't mean I wouldn't use either/both in a game: just that I wouldn't stat it out, since game effects are neglible. cheers, Mark

Re: spells and active cost Or The Dragon Waiting (where RSR is coupled with Side efefct) - or any one of a dozen other fantasies. RSR seems to be fairly common in fantasy literature. That said, RSR rarely fizzles when it would be unheroic, in fiction, because it's a novel. Heroes rarely die from a lucky hit by an unnamed opponent early in the adventure, either, for the same reason. "Huh. The troll killed Frodo." "Yeah that spear went right through him. OK, Boromir, I guess you wanted the ring, right?" cheers, Mark

Re: Limitation on Aid I'd go for -1/4, the limitation would only be limiting rarely. However, for what you suggest, the Acolyte loses the same amount, correct? In that case I'd allow a minor side effect for another -1/4. cheers, Mark

Re: Beholder

Re: Martial Arts Idea I like the idea - and since I already use standard power building rules to build MA attacks, it's immediately applicable. Thanks, Sean! cheers, Mark

Re: spells and active cost Variable limitation. I'd suggest requiring that at base all magic spells take a (-3/4) variable limit. That means you need a total of -1 1/2 in limitations. You could do that with "Requires a hard Skill roll: Active Point penalty to Skill Roll is -1 per 5 Active Points" plus gestures and incantations or you could take an easier skill roll with gestures and incantation and concentration, or you could, if you had the right foci did a little chanting and wiggling about and took a little extra time, avoid a skill roll altogether. If you were really desperate, you could take a side effect. Since the rules state that "The GM may define which Limitations characters can use to satisfy the Variable Limitation" you can decide - incantations, gestures concentration, extra time, foci, side effect - they all sound good. Only works on Whales, probably not. "Only works on the grave of a twice-killed necromancer" might well. This gives you a great deal of freedom as a GM and lets players decide how much of a penalty they are going to take and mix it around on the fly. cheers, Mark

Re: Beholder Yeah, but in 4E, which Lucius cited, I'm not sure the Beholder has all those groovy attacks any more. Almost all spells now just do HP damage or move a target around, which judging by the Lucius cite is probably true of the Beholder too. It looks like it just does a single or special attack. That's kind of sad .... cheers, Mark

Re: Brink Of War

Re: Martial Arts Idea

Re: Beholder

Re: Eye - conic Monster I don't think that part is actually important - what is important is that it be able to launch great hurt on a whole party. Even from its earliest incarnations, the Beholder has always been a boss monster: the kind of thing you could throw at a whole party and have them wet themselves. I think the only thing we hated more than Beholders in AD&D were Vampires and higher level Demons/Devils. We'd far rather take on a Dragon than a Beholder, because even though Beholders are (marginally) easier to kill, they could lay out an awesome amount of serious smack in a short period of time, before they went down. To sum up, there are two things that make the Beholder what it is: 1) Giant floating eyeball thang (giant floating toe is interesting, but not really the same - as you note there's a slightly nightmarish "something" about that eye) 2) Zappy death and pain (Speaks for itself, really) The original version was heavily armoured and had a nasty bite, but those aspects could readily be removed without harming the overall image. Personally, if I was building a beholder in Hero, I wouldn't bother with a new advantage, I'd go the Hydra route. Main character: big floating body with central eye. Little duplicates (one per eyestalk) with regeneration from death, no movement, little BOD (and no recombining or sharing Stun/BOD), a dependency on the main Body and one zap power each. That way all of them that can get a line of sight can zap and attackers can lop off individual eyestalks, nullifying that power. That's close to the original concept, too: in AD&D, eyestalks had their own AC and HP and you could lop them off - though they'd grow back in time. cheers, Mark

Re: spells and active cost

Re: Fantasy Art Thread This is a good point - I've fixed it simply by going back and tweaking the buildings relative width, depth and height, which I can do simply by stretching: it costs nothing extra in terms of computer resources. Thanks for the feedback! cheers, Mark

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Re: Beholder It's giant floating eyeball of zappy death and pain. Take that away and you have something else. As Tood Lockwood (the guy responsible for the current visual design) put it "It used to be this vaguely ridiculous soccerball with penis-like tentacles". Over the years, the beholder has gotten bigger, bitier, spikier and a trifle more emo. But that's basically all just chrome. It's such an iconic, yet simple monster that I don't think you can really re-imagine it in any significant way. cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread I've done this in the past, but .... tedious Especially tedious if you don't like the final composition and want to go back and redo it cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread Nope. But since I'm rendering stills, not animations, it's not a problem (except of course, you do need to plan ahead). I have plenty of "hero" buildings and trees for up front: what I have lacked are background fillers. I have been making lots of "flats" - photos of trees on simple planes to fill in forest backgrounds - so the current project is houses. Another alternative would be to buy Vue infinite, which actually does what you suggest above - when you use lots of one object it automagically reduces the render quality expended on those further away from the camera letting you use squillions of them. The feature (called ecosystems) also allows you to say "Program, decorate that hill in houses for me in a tasteful fashion, but not on the bits I have designated as roads" rather than placing them all by hand. Alas, this feature is only available on the high end versions of Vue and I balk a bit at coughing up about 1500 NZD for what's basically an occasional hobby. Cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread Sure, knock yourself out! Cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread Oh, they are more than a bit iffy . If you look at Fitz's picture of Morrach, where it says "houses, etc" - these are houses, etc. The "houses" are simple 7 sided polys with a texture slapped on (not a very hi-res tecture either: I limited it to around 500 kB). These are not "hero houses" designed to look very realistic up close - they're designed to fill in the background and as such, I made them as simple as possible so I can render a couple of hundred of the suckers without waiting all evening. Also, they currently lack chimneys. Originally I planned to leave them off, in the interests of keeping the polycount as low as possible, but even at a distance, multiple chimneys add a little something to the skyline, so I am now texturing some chimneys. I have made some nice tower/wall models in the past - with supporting beams for the galleries, and tiled roofs, and textures which look good up close (plus have a bunch of commercial/freebie buildings, some of which are excellent) - but alas then found that 20 or 30 of the things would slow rendering to a crawl (or only a half dozen of the best detailed ones). So they're being seen here much closer than intended - which is why the textures look lame. Still, on the whole I am happy with them, given that I put a dozen together on Sunday and another half dozen this evening. Two more nights and I should have about 30 assorted houses and shops, which should give sufficient variety for townscapes, without overwhelming my computer's memory. I'm also putting together a biggish church, which will also only be useful for distance shots. cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread Heh. Inspired by the Morrach sketch and also by the paper models thread, I decided it was to dust off one of my plans - making a whole bunch of low-poly medieval houses that I can use as background filler for pictures. I've done about half of them at the moment, but I did a test render that I think looks OK - and all those houses render in 2-3 minutes! cheers, Mark

Re: And off we go! Yep, the entry to the site for my gaming world is here From the main menu (upper left), choose "Races and Peoples", and then from the subsidiary menu (bottom left) choose "Societies and Cultures". This give access to all the different regions in my game world: the current setting is at the top: "The Su'uvenayan Archipelago". Clicking on this will change the main menu to one covering the various aspect of the archipelago. cheers, Mark

Re: And off we go! On the after deck, Dalarna picks himself up and begins to gesture. As he casts his spell of calm waters, the current suddenly ceases to pull at the Sea Ghost and one by one they watch the remaining Samadrian ships rush past them to destruction. With their leader unconscious, and The Mouth greedily swallowing their ships, the remaining few Samadrians lose their will to fight: two of the armigers leap into the sea to avoid capture, while the rest of the soldiers throw their weapons down. The deck is covered in bodies. Of the pirates only a handful remain, while none of the PCs are unwounded – most of them are seriously wounded. Dalarna’s crew, which was larger, has fared slightly better. Faced with a choice of the sea or turning pirate, the remaining Samadrians choose to turn pirate and take the blood oath, all apart from their captain, who when he regains consciousness offers his parole – he promises not to try to escape as long as he is treated well. He says his family will ransom him. His name is Daros Strongwake and he is from a noble family. Thana grants him this and he thereafter becomes relatively cooperative. The newly recruited pirates confirm that they were ordered to pursue the pirate ships and that their sorceror could talk magically with a priestess back in The Thorn who told them where the pirate ships were. The PCs conclude that the magic map is still working and thus that they cannot return to Pirate Cove. However, the crews are too battered to set sail for the lost island right now. They decide to anchor a safe distance away from The Mouth for a couple of days so that the healers can get to work. While they are resting, several of the PCs go with Dalarna to investigate The Mouth. Rowing there in a ship’s boat, Dalarna casts a waterbreathing spell and they slide down the anchor rope into a dim, green world. The large square thing that puzzled them seems to be the source of The Mouth. On investigation it appears to be a squat truncated pyramid with a ramp or flight of stairs up two sides, though it is so covered in weeds, coral and silt it is hard to tell for sure. They investigate the stairs and carry an odd-shaped rock off with them. At the top the pyramid is flat and there is a circle of smooth, jointed stone – oddly, the circle is completely free of any sign of weed or silt, enabling the joints between the huge blocks to be felt with the fingers. When they surface, some scraping away with knives reveals the odd-shaped stone to be a weathered head off a broken statue – apparently a bearded man, maybe with a crown. The rest of the crew is intrigued – clearly there is a sunken city here. The legends of the seven kingdoms are full of such stories. However, they don’t have time to explore further. Once the two ships have recovered crews somewhat, they weigh anchor and set sail southwards. The PCs converse with Daros and those who can’t speak it, start to learn Samadrian – the others skim through the papers they have acquired in their travels, looking for more clues. After 5 days, they sight a thin plume of smoke on the horizon and the next day, they see the island ahead of them: two peaks rising from the sea, clad in trees. The higher of the two emits a stream of smoke: the volcano. Daros is promptly locked in the hold again, in case his vow is tested too much. Sailing cautiously along the coast they spot a white sand beach and on it a ship, that matches the description of the one they have sought. After a brief tactics discussion, the ships hang back while several PCs approach underwater using Dalarna’s waterbreathing and swimming spells. Aquila climbs up onto the ship, but all is quiet. He sneaks below decks and hears voices. Quickly concealing himself he sees two sailors carrying a barrel of beer towards the deck. Letting them pass him, he sees them sit down on the railing and take a couple of drinks. He rushes them and bodyslams one, who flies off into the sea – Khelsen, who is lurking up against the hull, out of sight from the deck, promptly grabs him and holds him underwater, drowning him. Aquila then attacks the second, stunning him and then holding a knife to his throat. The man surrenders. The other PCs climb on board and Aquila climbs the rigging and signals the other ships, which sail into the bay. Meanwhile the rest of the PCs search the ship. It appears to be empty, apart from the captain’s cabin, which is locked. Eventually Aquila and Khelsen get that door open, and immediately start trying to open the seachest they find. They do so, but on opening the lid, a small bright light floats up – and then explodes! The sea chest and its contents are incinerated and Aquila is blown clean out through the windows, into the sea, where Dalarna saves him from drowning. Khelsen is knocked unconscious by the explosion and many things in the cabin are set on fire. The other PCs come running and eventually get the fire under control, but all the papers in the cabin and much else is destroyed. The PCs heal their injured companions and then, somewhat angrily, they interrogate the captured sailor. He tells them that the rest of the crew have headed inland where they have been working – his job was just to watch the ship. There are 26 crew on the ship, including a number of armigers – and master Thomas, plus 7 other cultists. The PCs are jubilant: these are the men they are seeking! The sailor they have captured says he will guide them to the others, but wants passage back to Ostragya and his freedom in exchange. They agree. He tells them the cultists are hunting treasure in a white city up on the mountainside and that they have spent weeks cutting a path to the ruins and clearing the forest away. He also tells them that they rotate the guards on the ship every couple of days and that tomorrow two more guards will come: if he and his comrade don’t return, the alarm will be raised. If the PCs want to surprise them they will have to move fast.