Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watmath.UUCP 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