Old Man

Sounds like a weapon bind, or maybe a weak grab.

Fantasy Hero (and Ninja Hero) are pretty good at statting out weapons in such a way that they play in a unique way, especially when martial arts are thrown into the mix. However, shields don't get the same treatment. By and large, Hero treats shields primarily by size and weight and that's about it. Between countries and time periods, shields had subtle but important differences in construction and were often employed in substantially different ways. I put together a brief list of historical shield types and their styles of use here; what is the best way to model these styles in FH? Hoplon (Greek): Heavy (15 pound) circular shield of wood faced with bronze. Typically covered user from chin to knee. Central arm strap with grip toward the edge. Very concave, allowing the user to bear part of the weight on his shoulder. Used in formation, but also seems to have been used very dynamically in one-on-one combat, the user actively moving it around to parry, strike with the edge, or cover behind the head. Pelta (Greek): Lightweight, wicker and leather (or leather woven with wood) construction, often with crescent cutout near gripping hand to help control spears held in primary hand. Straps/grip arrangement presumed similar to hoplon. Not clear exactly how it was used, but peltasts seem to have been armed mainly with throwing spears or javelins; light weight and cutout suggest that wielders would have used it actively. Scuta (Roman): Basically a huge, heavy (15-22 pound), curved rectangle of plywood and leather, almost more of a mobile piece of cover than a shield. The grip, behind a central boss, was oddly horizontal, so the user's forearm must have pointed downward when carried. Often rested on the ground while its bearer fought from behind it. Also used for shoving. Mostly just held to cover the left side of the body in individual combat. Hard to see the user even raising it to block a head shot in time. Celtic shield (Early Celtic): Actually quite similar to scuta, but flat. Plywood covered with leather or cloth, wood boss with vertical braces running the height of the shield, horizontal grip behind the boss. Usage unknown. Targe (Later Celtic): 20" buckler with forearm strap and grip. Handgrip often designed to allow user to grip a dirk in the shield hand, point down, protruding from behind the targe. Leather or linen covered wood with metal boss, or possibly all-metal construction. Used for active parrying; small size means little passive coverage. Round shield (Norse): Large (18-36"), circular, two plies of leather-wrapped wood with a central metal boss that covered the grip. No arm strap. Vikings appear to have employed the round shield almost as a giant buckler, very actively, to deflect strikes, jam opponents, and screen counterstrikes. Carried over the back using long strap. Kite/Heater (Later European): Layered wood faced with leather or (later) metal. Arm straps. Limited shield movement resulting from shape and arm straps. Kite versions provided good leg coverage especially for mounted troops. Jousting versions seem to have been basically used as a piece of armor, with relatively little active blocking/deflecting on the part of the holder. Buckler (Renaissance Europe): Small (average 12") shield, round or rectangular, wood/leather with metal boss or all-metal construction. Central grip with no strap. Small size made it mostly useless against missiles but allowed it to be carried at the hip. Primarily used for active parrying, or to cover the sword hand, with occasional strikes. Isihlangu (Zulu): Stiffened leather affixed to a vertical supporting shaft that also serves as the grip. No arm strap. Tall (up to 5ft) but still lightweight. Used to deflect thrown spears, parry in melee combat, and sometimes to hook an opponent's shield to move it out of the way for a thrust with the stabbing spear. Dhal (Indian/Persian): Round, buckler-sized (8" - 20") shield of thick hide or all metal construction. Usually concave. Distinctive feature is the central pair of handgrips (with resulting square of four metal bosses visible on the outside of the shield), plus a cloth knuckle-lining on the inside of the shield. When holding the grips, the shield hand knuckles press against the lining, creating a very firm grip. Sometimes an arm strap was also used. Some models also had a central spike protruding from the outside of the shield for offensive use, probably fairly effective given the grip arrangement. Tengpai (Chinese): Medium round shield of rattan, with wicker armloops and a vertical wooden grip offset about 1/3 of the way from the center of the shield to the edge. Very lightweight and actively, almost acrobatically, used as per traditional Tai Ji Quan forms. Double Steel Tiger Head Shields (Chinese): Dual rectangular metal shields, strapped to each forearm, with points cut in the forward edge for use as an incredibly inefficient thrusting weapon. Perhaps 18" x 24". These shields appear to have been pretty heavy and ungainly, to the point where it's hard to believe they were a real type of armor, but apparently forms exist for these in Hung Gar and Choy Li Fut. (Choy Li Fut also has similar forms for dual tengpai.)

Obviously Doomsday killed it. Not Bryan Singer?

Don't think I've ever eaten a meatloaf I liked.

@Greywind: I could see that, but mechanically it seems like some kind of activation roll would make more sense than throwing in an arbitrary line in the hit location table. I could see bypassing a breastplate, for example, but a chain hauberk not so much. Weapon type matters too, of course; I've often been jealous of Gurps' differentiation between cutting, piercing, and impact damage. HERO tries to handle that in the weapon tables but I've hated every table since FH1. @Indy3: Likewise, you'd think that would be better handled under the bleeding rules. Of course, location 4 doesn't come with additional bleeding, and location 3 doesn't come with a flash attack. Suddenly it seems as though we'd be better off with a hit location table that had columns for location, stunx, bodyx, bleeding dice, and tertiary effects...

I can take it.

What's cool about this thread is I don't even have to check the recent posts to it before posting myself. It's vBulletin-proof!

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/saturn-v-moon-rocket-engine-firing-again-after-40-years-sort-of/ http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/16/f-1-moon-rocket/viewall Probably the Wired article.

The actual meaning of 'vitals' clearly varies depending on which Hero book and section you're looking it. It's been explicitly defined as vital organs, i.e. the heart, but the sectional armor charts have pretty much always treated 13 as the groinal region. Hence the uselessness of vests for defending vitals. It doesn't help that location 13 on the chart is right between abdomen and thighs, making that interpretation all but foregone with players. This discrepancy is actually kind of annoying in the sense that a groin wound, while surely causing plenty of stun and bleeding, just would not be an x2 body hit.

Kepler, we have a problem

Yet another reason why Imperial stormtroopers should ditch their blasters and pick up AK-47s. Have the sick sticks from Minority Report been listed yet?

I've never been able to figure out why sports channels are all the same. Seriously, there are so many sporting events going on all over the planet at any given time, why is ESPN showing USFL games from the '80s? Whereas less-widespread sports channels like Vs. would show cool things like Chuck Norris' team kickboxing league. I'd like to see a truly international sports channel where I could see things like actual muay thai bouts in Thailand, or good coverage of more violent sports like rugby. My own cranky is that I seem to have caught Nolgroth's virus, plus my coworker got canned last week and I'm wondering if I'm next.

This is so incredible that I hate to nitpick... but is there a way to change the default font that the fillable text comes up as?

I'm not sure I understand why the Earth's orbital axis would vary so wildly without the moon.

What is lethal about the Martian atmosphere? I know CO2 is somewhat toxic, and that there is very little of any kind of atmosphere on Mars in the first place. But if you were to stand naked on Mars and take a few deep breaths, what would happen?

Still do I think. I wonder if they standardized on a die type.

That was certainly my reaction at first. It was only after the system had failed, and I actually got past what they'd done with the stats, that I took the time to read the rules. It was quite an accomplishment, really, merging Hero with Interlock and coming up with a pretty elegant system. It still had its flaws, but considering what they were trying to do it turned out better than I would have expected.

It's the 30d6 haymaker that worries me.

Exactly--a game system should not be so flawed that the GM has to cover for it. Sure, the GM will always have to control character designs, but there's nothing munchkin about that stat-heavy build. There's no funny math or edge cases--the system explicitly allows, even encourages, that design. Hero has been covering this egregious flaw with GMs and house rules for decades.

5th is fine for folks who are used to it, and who are used to working around the obvious imbalances in the figured characteristics system. But I must gently disagree with Paycheck's assertion that it's an attempt to 'leave veteran players behind'. Hero Games could either keep publishing books for a set population of Hero grognards, or they could try and improve the system to get new players on board. I had many years of fun playing 3rd, 4th, and 5th ed Hero, and I loved every minute, but I'm not blind to the system's flaws either. Seriously, it doesn't take long for new players to figure out how messed up the original figureds system is. After that you're building characters with this giant elephant in the room, which is that the system favors a STR 100, DEX 30, CON 30 brick with a little multipower tacked on. Build anything else and you're leaving points on the table. For all that the non-figureds system may be slightly counterintuitive, at least it isn't radically unbalanced. And again, it only matters for ten minutes of character creation; once the dice start rolling, figured/non-figured is in the past.

About a dozen Earth-like planets, all within a few light minutes, orbiting each other in a complex arrangement that occasionally has the planets approaching so close to each other that their atmospheres touch.

YMMV. My daily commute takes me through a (former) swamp, temperate rainforest, rocky desert, and beach sand dunes. If I were a few hundred miles southeast I could add high altitude snowy mountains, coniferous forests, and barren fields of hardened lava. I don't think this place would even fill a Greyhawk hex.

Shrug. I envisioned Kloshotha as one of the more indifferent types of evil, as opposed to being actually malevolent. What drives it is mainly insatiable, blind hunger. I dunno if extreme size is enough to qualify as 'leader' of the pantheon.

For centuries mankind has been spared the repulsive sight of Kloshotha, the eternal Worm God, as it lay in the remotest hills of the Northeast. The fervent actions of a nameless cult, whose membership gradually changed hands from forgotten Native American tribes to insular colonial zealots, kept the throbbing horror dormant and sated by soaking the earth of its temporary grave with the blood of human sacrifice. Long had the innocents of nearby 'civilized' America whispered about the disappearances of travelers, and of strange rituals performed in the woods. Eventually, gradually, the outside world crowded in on Kloshotha's resting place with its noise, its technologies, and its heedless indifference to ancient ways and knowledge. But it succeeded only in erasing the cult. And now, Kloshotha's servants--the worms, the larvae, the nematodes--writhe and twist under the bidding of their stirring, waking master. For it has not fed in decades. And it is hungry.

The nice thing about such long travel times is that it makes a good place to break between sessions and story arcs. Ninety days is long enough for badly wounded PCs to convalesce, and for less-wounded PCs to spend XP. You can always throw in an alien technology wormhole macguffin if the plot demands instantaneous travel.