Special Considerations


The Hero system is set up so that characters of similar points value are roughly comparable to each other when placed in stress situations. Combat is a common "stress situation" and non-combat skills and powers are correspondingly cheaper than combat-related powers. While this works most of the the time, in heroic level games with a grittier feel, it can lead to some slightly odd effects. This may not matter - but it's worth thinking about when you are designing your game's magic system.

While I am not a fan of banning powers outright, in some cases, you may need to do this to maintain the atmosphere you want. Below is a discussion of various powers and the distorting effect they can have in some games - particularly Fantasy Hero games.


Magical healing

While magical healing has long been a part of fantasy roleplaying games, the powers which cover this are relatively cheap in the Hero system. If you have a mage who can cast "Regeneration - usable on others" then you can expect any survivors of a fight to be fully functional again a few minutes afterward. While this may be good for the players, it does mean that adventures where the players must overcome injuries, taking punishment as they approach their goal, are not possible. Instead, after a fight they're either dead - or uninjured. It's hard to maintain a gritty atmosphere under these conditions, and the players will be more reckless if they know that injuries can be quickly healed.

Healing has some of the same effects, but it is not quite as bad, since it has a defined limit to the number of Body points that can be restored. It has been suggested that healing can be applied to individual wounds, but this involves way too much paperwork for most people - and makes Healing even more powerful. Nonetheless, there needs to be some way to deal with using this power when the characters may be wounded in multiple incidents at different times. A simpler way to deal with the problem is thus to calculate the maximum amount of magical healing a character can generate, and then keep track simply of how much of this is used up. Here's an example:

Lucius the Priest has a healing spell (simplified healing: 2d6) which can generate a maximum of 12 points of healing (Stun) - and up to 4 body. His companion, Hrothgar the Unseemly, gets his nose broken in a barroom brawl (2 body). Lucius can heal him easily enough. The next day however, Hrothgar falls off the roof of an inn and breaks his arm (-4 Body). Lucius can only heal 2 of this, before he reaches the limit of the spell.

So when can Hrothgar get more benefit from the healing magic? The answer is that he can only be magically healed again, when he has naturally healed back some of the magically-repaired damage. So if Hrothgar has a Rec of 6, he gets back 6 body per month, or about 1 point every 5 days. So after 5 days, Hrothgar has naturally healed 1 point - and can thus be healed magically for 1 point further. In other words, he can carry a maximum of 4 points of magical healing from Lucius's spell at any one time.

This system has two advantages. First - it's simple. Wounded characters need keep track of only two numbers - the actual injury they have suffered and the magical healing they have received. Both will decrease at the same rate. Secondly, it keeps healing from being too powerful. A healing spell can cure quite a lot of damage - but only once. Then it will take time before it can be employed at full effectiveness again.

But however you choose to handle it healing - particularly in Fantasy games - can drastically alter the feel and balance of the game. If you want a more "classic fantasy" feel to your game, you may wish to ban Regeneration and limit healing to 1 or 2 dice.


Immortality

Immortality has been a dream of humans for centuries, and a prized goal for sorcerors in many a story. Using Hero system rules it is easy - immunity to aging costs only 5 points, and let's face it - if I was a mage, it's the first spell I'd want (immunity to disease would be the second). Unlike Healing - discussed above - immortality doesn't mess with game balance. But in a Fantasy Hero setting, it certainly has the potential to mess with the game's background. If the spell is available, kings and emperors will get their hands on it. Mages will covet it. Even wealthy merchants might be able to buy it (it's only 5 points after all). The traditional medieval world which still forms the core of most fantasy games would be greatly altered if the senior priesthood and nobility didn't age, but instead grew ever older and more powerful. What would happen to the laws of succession if a prince had to wait perhaps hundreds of years to claim his throne? By that time he could have fathered several generations of other princes, who in turn could have fathered more...

You could argue that mages might not want to give the spell to other people, but if it costs them little to do so (2 character points are enough to create an independent item that confers the power) and people would offer huge sums for such tokens, it's hard to see why they wouldn't. Certainly player characters would do it, which makes it harder still to argue that NPCs would not.

A few deathless, ancient mages can be fun to have a round. A whole coterie of them is something else again. That's not to say you can't or shouldn't allow immunity to aging into the game - it can be great fun. Just think about the consequences before you do. One good way to reduce the numbers of immortal characters is to say that when a character with immunity to aging has it dispelled (and it is a very cheap spell, and thus very easy to dispel) the character gains back all the years he has actually lived. For very old individuals this means that they would basically just crumble away into dust. This makes artificially youthful characters very fragile - and increases the demand for more expensive spells which restore actual youth, not just hold off advancing years.

However, immunity to aging is not real immortality. A non-aging magic user - even if he avoids being dispelled - can still be killed by a simple piece of sharpened steel (or a thrown rock, for that matter). There are a number of ways to generate something a bit closer to actual immortality. These are included here for interest's sake - unlike immunity to aging, they are expensive enough that they are much less likely to have an effect on the game world, since few but the most powerful mages would have access to this level of power and they are unlikely to part with it so easily.

One way to simulate actual immortality is Regeneration from death, listed in the Hero rules. A second approach is this:

This spell (which is rather expensive) needs to be cast before the character is killed. But once done, a new version of the character appears if the old one is killed - providing a character who - as long as his two bodies are not killed immediately sequentially can duplicate the trick - and thus cannot easily be killed. This is the trick I used to make the all but unkillable monster Inwai in Sengoku. It's a good trick for recurring villains of the magical kind.

Alternatively, you can buy extra body, fully invisible (+1), only to calculate point of death (-2), feign death and regeneration. A character with this combination of powers can be hacked up - and will look convincingly dead, but in fact can remain alive - and come back later. A character with this power who bought 10 extra body would look like he was dying if he took more than 10 Body, and would look convincingly dead once he had reached -10 Body - but in fact would need to take 20 Bod y before he started to die and reach -20 before he actually died. Not an easy task if he regenerates as well! Of course this won't help if his attackers burn the body to ash.


Movement Powers

Movement powers can easily be unbalancing in a fantasy game. You only need to see the example cited in "all-conquering wizards" to see what I mean. If you have a traditional fantasy game with medieval-style castles, a clever player can wreak havoc with your best-laid plans given access to spells like Flight, Teleportation or Tunneling. Likewise, if the players have access to spells which allow all or most of them to fly, wilderness-trek adventures are off the menu. It's hard to justify a ban on such powers, which means the best advice is simply - think about how your players get around when designing games. If you have a player with powers like Teleportation, remember that other wizards can cast counterspells to protect against such entry - and secure places like castles will be very likely to have such magic.

Here's a few suggestions: Force wall (1 PD/ 1 ED, hardened) will stop teleporters. It's expensive - and easily destroyed - so it is best cast on the INSIDE of strong stone walls - and on limited, high security areas like keeps. Still, it's a valuable tool.

Tunnelers can be best be kept out by other means - although a forcewall might stop them temporarily, they'll probably be able to blow a hole in it or go around it. A large area affect drain against tunneling (continuous, uncontrollable at 0 END) cast under the castle should stop them (although that also requires a powerful mage). Alternatively, an elemental imprisoned under the castle and compelled to attack tunnellers will at least make them pay for their free entry.

Fliers - especially when combined with an invisibility spell - are even harder to keep out. A few flying creatures or an air elemental are probably the best defence here. Storms and flying monsters are also the best deterrents to players who wish to avoid all that grubby ground travel. Still, once they've gotten flight, be resigned to the fact that you won't be able to keep 'em on the ground.

Finally, to secure your castles against magical intruders, perhaps the cheapest - and most reliable - route is some area effect detection spells. That makes getting OUT the hard part!


Permanency of magical effects

In the Fantasy Hero rules, it is suggested that "permanent" spells not be permitted. It's easy to see why - no-one wants a magic user with a permanent forcefield running around. Moreover, there are plenty of other spells that could be a real nuisance if made permanent. However, many magical effects - from those left over from ancient sorceries, through those cast on castle dungeons to keep intruders out, to simple heating and lighting spells - are also forbidden if you choose such an approach. Remember also that permanent spells with a combat application are not much more imbalancing than spells with Trigger and a duration.

There are two ways to deal with this problem. The first is to allow only permanent spells that have the limitation "Independant". That should reduce the number of permanent spells significantly. The second is just to accept permanent spells and fight abuse with cleverness. Making a spell permanent is not cheap, and the points spent on this after all could well be used in more game-unbalancing ways. If you have characters who always have permanent protection spells, they tend to become dependant on them. So, let them encounter characters from time to time who can dispel them - or use spells like Mage's Bane (specifically developed for this task!).


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