Doc Democracy

Re: Is 6th Edtion worth the money? Personalloy, no game book is worth the money unless you intend to use it in some way. If you are looking to get a different gaming experience but to continue playing HERO then I think 6th edition is worth it - it is as expensive as any other game system. If you are looking for new experiences then it is definitely not - better to look for a different system. That is how you get substantially different gaming experiences that you might bring back to a HERO based game at a later date. I have recently enjoyed playing a game based on the FATE system that I think has some nice concepts not present in HERO. I have also enjoyed playing Runequest that is not likely to give me anything to bring back to HERO. I have bought 6th edition but I have not really used it in anger yet. I like to have as many HERO resources around me because I think many games I play in future will be heavily based around the HERO system rules but will incorporate a lot of things I have brought from elsewhere. So for me, not yet paid off in monetary terms but I wanted it. :-) Doc

Re: Normals vs Zombies game - advice sought, please! I would begin with not very much on each character except the basic archetype (friendly gardener etc) and a whole bunch of cards cardboard with some small labels on them that provide skills and attributes that you have costed out. The players play their characters and if they can narrate into the story one of the attributes etc then they can take it for their character. That way the attributes are built into the characters as the story takes shape. If you want fast development on top of that, I would be inclined to allow advancement rolls whenever a skill is successfully used in a stress situation. If the advancement roll is for a 14- roll then it gets better on a 15+. This caps the advancement and you can adjust the plateau by using straight 3D6 or 3D6 with adjustments to make it easier or harder to get to the point where you need to roll 18 to advance. I would provide bonuses to the upgrade roll for good roleplaying...or simply making the game more fun for everyone. In heroic games I tend not to use a detailed speed chart, I indicate that everyone has two actions a round but some characters have bonus actions... Doc

Re: The Value of Potential - Characteristic Maxima and CP You put that so much better than I did Hugh, but I have to spread it around before I can rep you again...

Re: The Value of Potential - Characteristic Maxima and CP

Re: The Value of Potential - Characteristic Maxima and CP This is where package deals might come into their own - you get different characteristic costs and possibly different costs for other things so that dwarfs might get reduced costs for STR, BODY, CON and END while increasing their costs for DEX, non-craft based magic and with a few required complications... you can see anyone wanting to build a tank style warrior going for this. Requires thought but definitely gives the players a steer on how you think things should be done. You would also expect the players who want a little bit of everything to stick with vanilla human stuff... Doc

Re: The Value of Potential - Characteristic Maxima and CP Something I have toyed with over time is changing the characteristic costs for different races. This could be difficult to balance properly but if you wanted one particular race to consistently have more BODY than other races then changing the costs of that BODY would encourage just such a thing in a way that changing characteristic maxima would not. Effectively you would be telling the players, if you want a character with high BODY, then I am telling you to pick race A, it will be cheaper that way. They can go against this and make a character of race Y with high BODY but they will pay a premium for that. The more I have thought about it, the less I have worried about balance. If I have enough choices that anyone gets a bonus on something, then I am encouraging the players to follow the biases of the gameworld I envisage and if they do that then they should be rewarded. Doc

Re: Reversion-Only Multiform Do you need to go as far as the multiform? Could you not simply purchase a few complications (such as automaton) with the limitation of 'only when unconcious' (possibly +1/2 depending on how often you see the character being unconcious!) and any psych limitations limited to 'only when concious' (possibly a +0 limitation). When the character is knocked unconcious the cyborg loses its higher functions, and possibly some of its abilities that might rely on such things, and takes on the automaton complications. Doc

Re: Clockwork and Chivalry in HERO: rule development stuff I guess you are right. If the focus is made to magnitude 12 which would allow for a magnitdue 12 elemental (60 active points, 300 point elemental) then that only provides the possibility of casting the spell. The alchemist then has to summon elemental with -12 to his Summon Elemental Skill. Of course it still allows players to build the skill up to take away the danger of making the foci in the first place but that could get old after a while. If you summoned a small elemental then the focus would be partially degraded - summoning a magnitude 4 elemental with a magnitude 12 focus would leave you with a magnitude 8 focus. If you wanted to summon a magnitude 12 elemental after that you would have to create a new focus and work it up to magnitude 12 with all of the problems that might incur. You cannot use multiple small foci instead of one big one. As for finding foci - you can only use foci that you have created yourself - so finding a big one simply deprives a rival of some of their power... :-) Doc

Re: Clockwork and Chivalry in HERO: rule development stuff

Re: Need a Map It would possibly be easier if I spoke Danish. I'm sure some of those sites would have been hugely interesting if I could only read the text! Doc

Re: Need a Map There are quite a few good links when you search on Viking Hill forts and fyrkat but not so much in the way of better graphics... Doc

Re: Nanotech / magical self-growing structure

Re: Need a Map Not quite what you are looking for but this might go some way to getting there.... Doc

Re: Nanotech / magical self-growing structure I am unfamiliar with the new rules as yet (indeed am far more at home with 4th edition - the last time I really played enough to know the rules without looking at the books). However, is gradual effect still in there? It would seem to fit the slow progression of a power (and I would like to weigh in with Barrier). If you begin the power Barrier with gradual effect then after a set amount of time you should see the barrier beginning to grow and to progress over time. Doc

Re: what is appropriate for "spell" or "weapon-based" powers My first thought was about the double damage thing. What you have to be careful about in conversion is achieving the effect despite the different systems. In D&D double damage means, on average, you do double the hit points to your target. If you double the damage in HERO you are likely, on average to do much more than twice the BODY or twice the STUN. For example - 6D6 Hand Attack does 21 STUN and 6 BODY. Against 15 PD this does 6 STUN, 0 BODY. If you double the damage it does 27 STUN, 0 BODY. More than four times the STUN damage. To achieve an average of double damage +2D6 would work. Doc

Re: Clockwork and Chivalry in HERO: rule development stuff Maybe I should be less garbled when setting my desires. :-) Things get lost. Spells will not be bought by players, they are available to anyone who can create the necessary focus. Active points are not going to be the issue. My issue with balance is the creation of the foci that give access to the spells. The actual mechanics of what makes a big spell or a small spell are to the side of the issue. While KS does have a wealth of stuff on his site, this is slightly off the beaten track though and so I have to work it through on here. I dont think my first guesses are too far off but would appreciate someone else to have a critical eye on them. Even if I was to use the END Reserve it would mean that creating a focus created an END reserve with no REC. You cannot recharge a focus, only create a new one. You need to determine how much END goes into the focus when you create it. When the focus is in your hand all you need is a KS: Spell to cast the spell using the stone - the KS will be the same regardless of whether the spell is 10 active points or 100 active points. The only difference is in how much END it would use. The core issue is the same. How do you limit the players ability to create huge foci with a small expenditure of points. Doc

Re: Clockwork and Chivalry in HERO: rule development stuff Endurance reserve was my first thought. I think the focus creation/destruction works slightly better as I do not have to think about getting the END costs right - I simply have to cause BODY destruction to the foci.

Re: Gravity powers Well, if you want to be simplistic about it. I'm sure there is something about area effect TK only being able to affect a maximum weight of the STR - not the full STR on each and every thing within the area. Doc

Re: Gravity powers I think that you could use Change Environment for much of it and would allow you to wing many of the less frequent things (like the doors) or added impetus to a movethrough due to increased gravitic acceleration. Doc

Re: Gravity powers When your hero increases the gravity, what effect do you see that having on the people within the increased gravity? They find it more difficult to carry themselves or anything else. Yes? What thing on the character sheet allows you to carry stuff? STR, yes? They should find it more difficult to jump, to throw things any distance and a number of other things. All of those rely on STR in the game. So, effectively, you are reducing their available STR. What effect do you think the added gravity will have on opponents? When you tell us that, we will be better able to identify how to build what you want. :-) Doc

Re: Gravity powers This is not a slight but you are still doing what most newcomers do. You think of a power you want to buy and what effects that power shoud have. In HERO you need to think of the effects you want your power to have first. Then you buy the powers in the book that have those effects. In one you want to make people have less effective STR (possible through suppress STR) and in another you want to do damage (possibly NND, possibly some AVAD based attack). As such you need to build both effects, not one power that does both. Doc

OK. I am fixing to run up some rules to run Clockwork and Chivalry. I am going to post the stuff in its final form in a thread elsewhere but I would like to use this thread to run stuff past people here. It is fantasy and so I reckon this is the best place to work from. As a start I would like to ask people's opinions on one of the aspects of the magic. The idea is that anyone can harness the magical power of the elements if they know the right things. Everything is based on first constructing a focus for magical energies which ablates as it is used. Nothing in HERO quite fits and so my idea is to use their ideas for making the focus and translating that as BODY in the focus for HERO. Each spell has to be 0 END and buy the disadvantage causes damage to Focus. Side Effect I think. However, the construction of the focus is based on knowledge too - you begin in the laboratory and make an alchemy roll and this adds 2 BODY to the focus. Each hour thereafter requires an alchemy roll at -1 to add another 2 BODY. A failed roll results in a mishap, severity mediated by how much the roll is missed by. This kind of works in the Runequest rules as the ability to increase the alchemy roll is self-limited - you need to increase the skill by experience rolls. Thus your ability to make big foci (and so access big spells) is also limited. In HERO that does not work the same. You simply purchase more skill levels in the alchemy skill to remove much of the danger of making the foci. I am wondering how people might achieve a similar result - balancing the danger of increasing the size of the focus against the gaining access to more powerful magical effects. I was thinking that I might give the skill a limitation of must fail a skill roll before being able to spend experience on it. Thus, if you have a 17- skill or better the chance of increasing it is remote. Certain artefacts might increase this, or exposure to things in game provide a greater opportunity. Thus, with Alchemy 11-, the chance of making a 2 BODY focus is 62.5%, converting that to a 4 BODY focus is 50%, then 6 BODY is 37.5%, then 8 BODY is 26%. So a 3% chance of getting to an 8 BODY focus. That does not seem to bad for a beginning alchemist. A master alchemist with 17- shifts that substantially. He would have an 84% chance of making an 8 BODY focus. 70% chance of a 10 BODY focus and 60% chance of a 12 BODY focus. If he pushes it to 14 BODY he would have a 40% chance of success. To give some idea of effects, all spells will do 1 BODY to the focus - so a 12 BODY focus will provide access to 12 low level spells, will allow the alchemist to cast spells with more juice (rather than giving +1 to hit and +1 BODY to damage, to go as high as +4 to hit and +4 damage for the duration of a fight). The +1 version would do 1 BODY to the focus, the +4 version would do 4 BODY. The foci are also used to summon elementals - the 12 BODY focus being able to access an elemental 12 times as powerful as a 1 BODY focus. So. Do you think that limiting the skill to this is OK or should I make the ability to grow the skill even harder? Do you think it would be unbalancing? Doc

Re: What is the best way to stat out a minefield? :-) Depends if it is simply colour or whether they are Knights of the Round Table who have failed their gluttony rolls and are now going to pay a price during a fight for straying from the path of righteousness. :-) To my mind, even a fight could be dealt with through one or two rolls if the fight is essentially just colour... Doc

Re: What is the best way to stat out a minefield?

Re: Which older modules are worth running? I have very fond memories of the Coriolus Effect. The first part of the scenario where the heroes discover the involvement of the Black Enchantress became the best ghost story scenario we ever played as a group. I threw away the rule book as far as mental effects went and removed all the player's power over the environment by GM fiat funnelling them towards a conclusion they could see coming from a long way off. I think there is the basis of a good game in most of the scenarios but most of them need work to give your players the experience they expect of a game today... Doc