Old Man

Re: Not D&D Conversely you could put your own religion in the game, if you're up to it. Mainstream religions still lay claim to supernatural effects.

Re: ET Stay Home Yes, but then we could eat them. See how much fun it is to be an alien invader? Seriously, which end of the anal probe do you want to be on?

Re: ET Stay Home Doesn't matter when it's Arcturian, baby!

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply! Yeah, that was one of the reasons I loved Dark Sun so much--putting a real twist on the "standard" races. Beardless dwarves. Treeless elves. Awesome. There were several "non-standard" races too, of course. Thri-kreen, half-giants, half-dwarves, and (in 2nd ed.) Aarakocra.

Re: FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? Bingo.

Re: FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

Re: ET Stay Home Which is why we should invade them first! And steal their women! Really it'd be much more fun to play offense in this scenario.

Re: FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? Good points, but I personally don't even care about that stuff so long as there isn't any particular weapon that is obviously superior or inferior to everything else on the chart. In 5th, spears were just outright better than swords in every way, for example.

Re: FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? Okay, I could write for days on what I'd like to see in FH6, but I'll pare it down to just three things. Be advised that I feel very strongly about these three things. 1. Balance the weapons table. That page is going to be one of the top three most referenced pages in the entire book. Muscle-powered weapons combat obviously figures extremely prominently in fantasy. Don't have certain weapons be better in all ways than other weapons, as in FH5 and Hero 6th. You'll never convince everyone that your weapons chart is perfect based on "realism", but you can make a case for game balance. FH is supposed to skew cinematic anyway, so please don't penalize players that want to use axes instead of spears. 2. Create a simple default magic system, or several such. Yes, Hero is the system that lets players create whatever magic system they want. But it does new players no good to have to create their own magic system before they can play. Even Lego sets come with instructions for a model or three. This would have to include a small grimoire of spells. Designing powers in Hero is hard; let players get into that after their first hit off the pipe. 3. I understand not including a setting, but a generic adventure ought to be included. You need to let new players jump in if they want to, and they can't do that with no scenario. A generic dungeon raid or the like, with pregenerated characters (and pregenerated magic), shouldn't take up too many pages or lock FH into a given "type" of fantasy, and would lower the learning curve. 4. In fantasy, transforms are too expensive, and STR and movement powers too cheap. The costs for stats and powers need to be altered. Okay, I know this will never happen, but I had to try.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: General Atomics electromagnetic rail cannon So I figure that thing must do at least 3d6K. Str min looks pretty high, it's probably a tripod mounted weapon...

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Tell Fate Yanagi I love her, tell Fate Yanagi I need her. Tell Fate Yanagi no go cry, And no go out, wit' Mits Funai.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I have been laid off, for the third time in my life. I wouldn't say it's easy, but it does seem to get easier with repetition.

With a little test footage: http://defensetech.org/2010/05/05/killer-drone-builder-general-atomics-builds-killer-electromagnetic-rail-cannon/

Re: Spell Multipliers in 6e? It reads a bit like a penalty for the mundanes to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Re: The cranky thread I downloaded a sound meter app for my phone and clocked my kid's angry screams at 95 dB. That, friends, is equivalent to a police whistle. Often I am carrying the kid when it is emitting its sonic shriek. Distance from shrieker to ear: six inches.

Re: The cranky thread Gee, I wonder how it learned that.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I think it's been covered here before, but I just finished His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik. Great book. What struck me about it was how easy it was to read--I didn't have to spend a lot of effort deciphering the author's writing. Relatively lightweight as far as characterization and plot, and shorter than most sf/f books nowadays, but I hardly felt as though I had overpaid. In face quite the opposite. Recommended.

Re: Spell Multipliers in 6e? Exactly. In high fantasy campaigns everyone has access to the powers list; in medium to low only the spellcasters do. The 1/3 spell multiplier from Turakian Age works all right, but it's kind of a blunt instrument. It does sort of achieve balance between spellcasters and mundanes. It still has two major problems, though. The first is that it's too granular. By the time I throw all the limitations onto a spell that I'm going to throw, the real cost would typically be anywhere from 5 to 8; if I am then going to divide by 3 and round, you can be damn sure I'm taking some of those lims off and making the real cost come out to 4, 7, or 10. The second problem is that it still doesn't prevent the combat mage from outperforming most other types of character. I'm not against the concept in general, but if mages can already do all kinds of things that fighters and rogues can't do, it's sort of unfair if they can also fight and sneak better as well. From a face-time-balance standpoint, spellcasters in low-medium fantasy should tend to be more suited to a support role, and combat mages should have to really specialize in combat magery in order to contend with martial artists and tanks. The third problem is that it does nothing to stop the One Big Spell artillery piece archetype. You know, the one who has a decent forcefield, a 4d6k 0 end autofire zorch ray, and maybe flight or something to "round out" the spell list. The fourth problem is that Hero powers are costed badly for fantasy, but that's a separate discussion. I guess that's more than two problems.

Re: The cranky thread Your latent superpowers are manifesting!

Re: Spell Multipliers in 6e? "Balance" winds up being too vague a word, really. Spellcasters can do things that mundanes can't; that's the point, obviously. FH spellcasters tend to have two problems--first, they can often wind up doing the mundanes' jobs in the group better than they can; and second, they can often become Swiss army knives that can do anything and everything (especially if MPs and VPPs are available).

Re: Required hit loaction It would depend on whether they're already playing with impairment. If not then you'd have to add that to the attack power.

Re: International Everything is a Spaceship Day That looks like suicide. I must have it!

Re: "Neat" Pictures Wow, look at the quads on that guy! No wonder he has no pants!

Re: The cranky thread It would help if the Church would quit painting such huge targets on themselves. Come on guys, try instituting a plan to prevent such abuses in the future, or cooperate with a police investigation once in a while. Throw us a frickin' bone here.