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Path: utzoo!watmath!jagardner
From: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Fantasy Hero Question
Message-ID: <16537@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 10:38:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.16537
Posted: Thu Sep 19 10:38:31 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 04:15:47 EDT
References: <430@aero.ARPA>
Reply-To: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 44

[...]

Sorry, I can't answer the Fantasy Hero question because I don't
have my copy here.  If you have access to the Champions III book,
look at the description of Transformation Attacks -- the Transformation
spell in Fantasy Hero is based on the Champions Transformation Attack.
(Go ahead and take a peek at Champions III in your games store.  The
owners shouldn't mind you looking at six measley lines.)

I've played five or six sessions of Fantasy Hero now and things came
out roughly as I expected.  Compared to D&D, magic will be much less
common and powerful (at least as far as characters are concerned; enemies
can be quite gross if your GM wants to make them that way).  Combat
seems bloodier, mostly because of the hit location system -- somehow
the tension is worse when you know you got hit in the sword arm or the
vitals, than in D&D where a general Hit Point total gradually diminishes.
Of course, you don't have the inflated Hit Point system either; your
character will always have about 10 BODY points when he/she is healthy
and is always going to be in real trouble if a sword hits unarmoured
flesh (unlike a 20th level fighter who may be naked and unarmed but
can still withstand dozens of stabs).

Our GM has combined Fantasy Hero very successfully with the Harn modules,
thereby obtaining a vast amount of background material.  Of course, Hero
Games has a record of providing very little background material for their
game systems, so finding help elsewhere is very useful.

You have to accept that Fantasy Hero is very different from D&D...more like
Runequest.  In most cases, character improvement is very slow.  For
example, a magic-user will have to play four or five sessions to get
the experience to buy one new spell, and that spell will be loaded down
with complications that make it somewhat impractical in combat.  On the
other hand, you occasionally have some luck.  In our last session, a
party of only 12 managed to take out a dragon...okay, it helped that
some of us had M-15s and plastic explosives, but the guy who did the
most damage only had a long bow (did I mention that this adventure was
a cross-over between a Fantasy Hero campaign and a post-holocaust
Justice Inc. campaign?  It was a lot of fun.  The Fantasy Hero types
concluded that the bullets were kicked out of the guns by a demon while
the JI types were always looking for the technology that made the
fantasy magic work.)

				Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo