Old Man

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Excellent, good to hear it. This is exactly how old school FH used to work. It's all right, but as you say, magic winds up being heavily limited and ritualistic, and it's harder for spellcasters like this to contribute when blades are drawn. I've gotten pretty good at building 15-20 AP spells that are still effective...

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Yes, but my point, again, is that MPs only work for you because you are imposing many house rule restrictions on the use of the MP. Which is fine, but it doesn't show that MPs are good in FH. Most players aren't playing in your campaign (though we wish we were); giving mundanes access to powers and MPs is pretty odd for any FH that isn't high fantasy.

Re: 1930 Art Deco Henderson Now that is a pulp hero vehicle.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Exactly. My point, however, is that you're making life difficult for yourself by using an abusable power framework for magic. I've always planned on writing up my own grimoire. Haven't gotten around to it for, oh, 22 years so far...

Re: Parenting in Ancient Civilizations I'm raising my kids according to ancient Kurgan traditions.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Just a nitpick, ECs don't require that mages have spells that are all about the same size. True, it's more efficient if they are, but they don't have to be. This to me looks like what is actually preventing spellcasters from dominating your campaign--you, the GM, not the rules. Given your MP or VPP setups, if you let me design my character's spells and didn't impose thematic restrictions on powers, my character would easily be competitive with purpose-built combat mundanes and would dominate the game outside of combat. For the one simple reason that I'd have most or all of the powers list on my character sheet. Your required limitations mostly only apply in combat and, while they matter, they're not enough to offset the ludicrous versatility that the MP cost breaks or VPP provide. Looking at MP costs more closely, supposing I go with the usual 40-point MP with 1.75 in limitations, my mage spends: 8 points on INT. 17 points on magic skill, so that all the skill rolls are 16- or better. 15 points for the MP reserve, again at -1.75. 15 points for 15 different 40-point powers. (This is conservative, by the way; usually if I'm trying to minmax an MP I'm shooting for 20+ slots.) = 55 points for 600 points' worth of powers. Now admittedly I can only use or activate one at a time, but I hardly need more than that when I have access to much of the powers list, and 40 points of anything in fantasy is usually pretty good. And this is what I'm trying to avoid--the swiss army knife character. Sneak into the castle in broad daylight? Sure. Interrogate a prisoner? No problem. Fly over to the next continent? Okay, I'll even pick up dinner on the way back. One point apiece. Kudos to you, by the way--I was always too lazy as a GM to build the whole grimoire myself or otherwise go back and forth with the player about what we should or should not allow his character to be able to do. I'm much more the "here's the system, go make a character, let's play" type. And I've played with many powergamers, and I am one myself, so I tend to want to preempt that kind of behavior up front. MPs and VPPs don't really help me, and I've found them abusable (by me), so I'm inclined to steer newer players away from those frameworks for fantasy spellcasters.

Re: The cranky thread At least she's getting lots and lots of overtime pay... right?

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #2: Crusading Priest I see production values are going up. Want.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Right. Fantasy Hero is fortunate in that it's possible to balance spellcasters and mundanes depending on how you set up the magic system. And by now the game's been around long enough for us to have fairly good data on where the balance point ought to be. At one extreme, you have 1st ed. FH, where spellcasters generally were inferior to warriors. Having to pay full cost for spells meant stacking an absurd (by modern standards) number of limitation on each spell in order to make them affordable. That meant that magic was typically slow, dangerous, and useless in combat--very swords & sorcery. I'm still used to coming up with -5 in limitations for a spell. 4th ed. FH introduced the College limitation, which was basically a free -1/2 limitation. That was a step in the right direction, but didn't go far enough balancewise; it just knocks a point or two off the otherwise full real cost of each spell. It also didn't help with some other issues.* Still, I've played far more 4th ed. FH than anything else. 5th ed. FH Turakian Age, of course, had the "real spell" 1/3 cost multiplier, which was kludgy, and probably overbalanced the spellcasters, but I haven't seen too many violent complaints from people who've played it. This is a flat 66% discount on all real costs, so it's a big jump over the college lim. At the other extreme is the multipower, which is an 80 or 90% discount on spells depending on whether ultra slots are used. I've played in a couple of campaigns where MPs were the spellcaster framework, and I'm kind of ashamed of myself, because in each of those campaigns, my character was the best in the party at everything with the possible exception of straight melee combat, where they were still hardly inferior. It's just too easy to get an extremely useful 30-40 AP power down to a 1- or 2-point slot. So from this I've determined that the "proper" balance of spellcasters vs. mundanes is achieved by giving casters about a 50% discount on the real cost of their spells. That seems to let them be useful in combat without being quite as good as true warriors, which seems about right to me given that spellcasters can still be extremely powerful outside of combat.** 50% is the cost break an EC tended to give (assuming it had a decent number of powers in it), which is why I've had quite a bit of success running campaigns with that particular framework for magic. But there's been a lot of resistance to using ECs in fantasy around these boards, which I never understood, and it's moot now anyway. * Chief among the Other Issues was the one-spell-wonder or starcastle, which typically manifests as a "mage" with a ginormous RKA and a forcefield to go with it. I object to these not because it's unbalanced necessarily, but because it's boring. ECs helped to dissuade these as well. ** I find that the real game-wrecking spells are not combat spells at all, but things like invisibility, telepathy, mind control, and 0 END flight. All of these can let the spellcaster fast-forward through significant plot points with little to no participation from the rest of the group.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. "Mom, can I take a bath early? I want to be clean and shiny for when Daddy gets home."

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Oh yes, I know that feeling. Well, I'm home. FWIW.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Warehouse 13 on Syfy was actually pretty good, or at least the two episodes I got to see were. Plus, the girl is really hot.

Re: The cranky thread So as I posted earlier, my car is missing a critical suspension bolt, and I am immobilized until I can get a replacement. Auto parts store #1: "Hi, yeah, my car is missing the rear upper control arm bolt on the suspension, it's a 1995..." "Sorry, I can't help you with a vague description like that. I need to see an actual example of the part you're trying to replace." "The one that I just said was missing?" Auto parts store #2 was more helpful but at least knew they didn't have it in stock, and referred me to the dealer. Dealer #1 doesn't have the part but can order it on Monday. If I prepay. And it'll take a week to arrive. And they assure me they're the only place on island that I can get it. Dealer #2 doesn't have the part but can order it on Monday. If I prepay half as much. And it'll take three days to arrive. Hooray.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? I understand what you're saying, but IMO equalizing the frameworks for both types of characters isn't enough. Again, mages have access to a long list of powers that mundanes can't use or deal with regardless of how specialized they are. Ideally this would be balanced by making those powers awfully expensive, but multipowers have the annoying effect of reducing all power costs to 1 or 2, which throws that balance out the window. When the wizard has twenty 40-point MP slots, it's really not hard for him to be as good or better than the 'specialized' characters around him. Why drop 12 points on Stealth when I can spend 1 point on Invisibility? Why drop 25 points on martial arts when I can spend 3 points on Aids to STR and DEX? Even if we allow rogues and fighters to have MPs as well, the mage still has a huge cost advantage because he can buy powers to do what the mundanes do, only cheaper and better. Unless we give the mundanes access to the entire powers list, which would be really, really weird high fantasy. (Really, this all gets back to one of my bigger complaints about the Universal HERO System, which is that powers are costed totally wrong for fantasy. But multipowers exacerbate the problem.)

Re: The cranky thread But you don't look like one. I think I'm finally over the jet lag. I fly home tomorrow.

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #1: The Cover! Nobody gets my jokes.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? I'm not sure I agree here, I'm afraid. Both these guys have multipowers, but one has access to the entire powers list while the other can only use a small fraction. I don't see what the specialist is supposed to do to 'play to his strength'; there's only so many variations on RKA you can take before you're just wasting slots. He can be marginally more effective at combat than the generalist, I suppose, bu not enough to make up for the lack of versatility.

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #1: The Cover! I also like the idea of dragons that can create dimensional portals with their breath weapons. I'll have to incorporate that into the game somehow. Otherwise it looks like things are pretty bleak for our heroes.

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? This is exactly why I always hated multipowers as the framework for FH magic. At 18 slots, this mage has half the powers in the powers list, and he's just starting out. And he clearly was not built by a munchkin.* Put Aids in three of those slots and the mage can do everything the fighter can, given a couple of phases to prep. Giving the fighter a multipower isn't going to fix much either; he's still only going to have access to 1/4 of the available powers, at most. The mage/fighter balance in FH is one of versatility vs. specialization. The fighter will never have access to the powers that the mage does, so it's important to cost the mage appropriately. I've come to the conclusion that multipowers are a really bad idea in FH. They're too cheap and too easy to minimax, and that makes the characters that have them (usually mages) superior in almost every way to the ones that don't. Sure, buying Aids and RKAs and whatnot is more expensive than just buying a weapon familiarity and some STR--unless you're giving a 90% cost break to the Aids and RKAs. I'd push for ECs here again, only they don't exist any more. It's too bad--I've played FH a lot of different ways, and ECs were the most perfect framework for FH spellcasters. * No heal? No teleport? Why is the flash only 2d6? This guy sprang for an 18 EGO and has only one mental power? And if all the slots must have 1.75 in total limitations, why not go up to 40 points instead of 32? They still only cost one point apiece.

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #1: The Cover! No, it is made of win.

Re: Sherlock Holmes? Why would we do that? No one else has.

Re: Kill the Dude with the Thing No, silly, you were supposed to kill the Thing along with the Dude, at the same time!

Re: The cranky thread That's the same as throwing tomatoes, according to Reagan.

Re: Musings on Random Musings What, try to clean the bathroom? No.

Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress..... He has a lot more animal-Conan going on. Arnie was always more arrogant-Conan. That last pic is a little over the line into cheesy.