Old Man

You ride your horse at a full gallop on asphalt? Isn't that animal cruelty?

A couple of suggestions that were made in earlier posts/threads: One suggested using casual STR limits to calculate encumbrance - which makes a lot of sense. Another was to classify armor into Light, Medium, and Heavy types. Light Armor has no penalties, Medium Armor is -1 to DCV and Physical Skill Rolls, Heavy Armor is -2 to DCV and Physical Skill Rolls. In addition to these, you have normal encumbrance penalties. You can also state that DEF only stacks to a certain limit no matter the source. So instead of the DEF 8 tank with Ring of DEF 4 Protection with a total of 12, you have a DEF 8 tank with a ring that adds nothing. I would recommend a limit of 5. Meaning if you want it higher than 5 it has to come from a single source. On another subject, Steven Brust's world of Dragaera has examples of plate armor and rapier fighters facing against each other. The balancing factors were skill, speed, and in some cases, magic.

I can't rememeber if it was a museum recreation or a book reference but I'ver seen it - Some European prince had a suit of studded armor made for him that used over a thousand rivets. It was quite heavy and the studs closely spaced. I can see where it would provide better protection than plain leather.

Retractable Armor Entangle 4d6, 8 DEF Only to Form Armor (-1) No Range (-1/2) Self Only (-1/2) OIF (-1/2) 60 pts Active 17 pts Real I suppose giving it charges would be appropriate - the ring or whatever can only form the armor so many times per day/recharge.

Another way to do it would be to do the entangle barrier thing.

As has been said before, the presence of the GM is not an excuse for maintaining a flaw in the rules.

The problem is that STR is so cheap everyone buys it. You can expect fighters to have 20-23 STR, thieves and clerics to have 18 STR, and even mages rarely sell back their STR because they lose so much for so little. Most mages wind up with 13 STR. Real Roleplayers, of course, won't buy their STR up to such absurdly high levels for non-warriors, but there's nothing in the system to discourage people from doing so.

I can make just as good use out of the 2 points I gained by selling off one point of STR and one point of STUN, personally. Better, if the STR mins don't come down on the breakpoints.

Of course it isn't. But the way STR costs right now, half the party is going to have superhuman strength because it is without question the most combat effectiveness you can buy for ten points, unless you are playing a mage.

Yeah, it's probably SARS. Or dengue fever, or west nile virus, or anthrax. Maybe all four. Good thing I spent 4 points on extra life... I have to say that 3d6-4d6 HKA is much higher, in my experience, than I am used to seeing. But we did always play under some fairly arbitrary limits for STR and levels. Increasing the cost of STR would help with that, but then that's a whole other thread.

I am firmly of the opinion that STR should cost at least 2 per pt., if not 3, particularly in heroic-level games. In Champions STR is already too undercosted; in FH it also determines your melee and ranged damage and (in FREd) your rPD. Right now STR is so cheap that it makes absolutely no sense not to buy it; even "wimpy" mages gain nothing from selling it back.

Since when did light fighters work in D&D? Admittedly I haven't played D&D for decades but the last time I checked it didn't have penalties for armor either. Nor do I see why this discussion is silly. As of FREd, unarmored fighters stand absolutely no chance against armored ones. This may be 'realistic' but surely you can see how it would bother players who prefer the lightly armored warriors that are everywhere in fantasy fiction.

I'll take a few little burns over road rash any day. The stories I've heard about the stiff plastic brush really curdle my blood.

Why don't you give your copy to me, and I'll look for it for you?

From what I understand, studded leather is much better at preventing road rash when you fall off your motorcycle.

I would bet money that Steve would have put that in the new Fantasy hero book. So wait for it to come out, go down to your local game store, wait till the owner's not looking, and then tear out the pages you need.

But why should we have to change it? This is Hero, the system that is supposed to permit any kind of cinematic campaign. As written Hero simply does not permit parity between light and heavy PC fighters. There isn't even an optional encumbrance rule that might help to alleviate the problem. Of all games Hero is the one that I should expect not to have to rewrite. I agree with you that in Real Life an armored warrior has an overwhelming advantage aginst one who does not. But unlike you I am not interested in simulating Real Life. I am interested in simulating Movie Life, where armor makes warriors slower and clumsier, giving light fighters the opportunity to achieve nearly equal combat effectiveness with their armored comrades.

*cough*criticalhits*cough*

You forgot to give the heavy fighter a large shield. Feel free to give the swashbuckler a small shield, which is all he can carry. Even without the shields this example only proves that the swashbuckler hasn't got a chance. Sure, he hits the knight 90% of the time, but he inflicts damage only 25% of the time through the PD and rPD. And none of that damage is BODY damage, which is going to matter in the next combat. The problem Hero has always had regarding light vs. heavy fighters is that swashbuckling costs points while plate costs only money. I'm not saying that that should change, but it shows that the armor needs to be inherently balanced by itself, so that in the game, a PC should be only slightly more combat effective with armor than without. This is utterly unrealistic from a historical standpoint but it is the only way to maintain balance between light and heavy PC fighters. Previous versions of FH accomplished this with an encumbrance penalty for armor, so that a character effectively traded DCV for rPD and was almost forced to use a large shield just to have some chance of avoiding blows. FREd eliminated that balance by taking away the encumbrance penalty, and now the same loadout gives the heavy fighter 8rPD and a net +3 DCV, making him nigh invulnerable. The only other balancing factor against armor is critical hits, which greatly penalize targets whose DCV falls too low. But again, changes in FREd have pretty much given heavy fighters a free +3 DCV, so even crits are unlikely to help.

Sounds like Brat Pack to me, but it may have been done more than once. I can't remember most of the details of the series.

Since when do Gangrels have claws of adamantium or lightsaber? Can you imagine trying to pick your nose with something like that?

Wasn't that the one where all the weapons and shields were clearly made of rubber in the slo-mo battle sequence? A good movie, but a poor props department.

Conversely, if there is practically no risk to characters in a given fight, then combat becomes a boring exercise in dice rolling. Game lethality is one of those fuzzy things where everyone has their own comfort level. I'm of the school where combat ought to be dangerous, otherwise there's nothing heroic about it.

Or you can use critical hits, which have the overall effect of ramping up weapon effectiveness. The last campaign I played in used hit locations without critical hits, and I was surprised at how durable the combatants became, since I had always played with crits up until then.

In my experience, a convict who is out on parole and probation is free to socialise with whoever he pleases and do whatever he wants, including commit more crimes. Should he actually get caught committing further crimes he will still be allowed out on bail, commit even more crimes, and not bother to show up for his sentencing. In retaliation for all this the judge will issue a meaningless and impotent piece of paper known as a "bench warrant". It will go into a vast stack with all the other bench warrants that the hopelessly understaffed and undermotivated sheriff's department will never serve. If the perp is dumb enough to get caught again, he will still be allowed out on bail, and again will fail to volunteer for sentencing. Lather, rinse, repeat. What, me? Bitter?