Legendary Heroes - Out This Week!

[JonGeere]

Well it is in the stores now. I've picked up a copy but found it the weakest product so far on an initial run through. The battle rules look promising, Legendary abilities less so, and the Legendary rune, artifacts and bestiary a turn off. No colour art.

Overall a climb down from Glorantha 2nd Age, Ralios and Monsters.

 

[GoingDown]

Finally I got it.

From first quick look, it seems interesting. I really like new method for skill halving (which is actually exactly the same I was decided to use myself before reading it from Legendary Heroes book, except I will use criticals and fumbles as well).

Mass warfare chapter might not be so useful for our group, but it seems to be solid stuff anyways - and the siege machines are great!

Overall, good book. To bad it might take some time before we will play in Legendary heroes level (we want to start with beginner characters first). Our real campaign starts tomorrow.

Good job Mongoose!

 

[Rurik]

What is the halving alternative they offer?

 

[GoingDown]

What is the halving alternative they offer?

After halving, roll normally. If both parties fail, it is re-roll. Simple and efficient.

No word about criticals or fumbles - which I will probably use. Nor possibility of tie situation, which I am going to use as well (with GM decision)

 

[Trifletraxor]

Well it is in the stores now. I've picked up a copy but found it the weakest product so far on an initial run through. The battle rules look promising, Legendary abilities less so, and the Legendary rune, artifacts and bestiary a turn off. No colour art.

Overall a climb down from Glorantha 2nd Age, Ralios and Monsters.

Saw that coming a long way! I have no plans of touching that book.

SGL.

 

[Rurik]

What is the halving alternative they offer?

After halving, roll normally. If both parties fail, it is re-roll. Simple and efficient.

No word about criticals or fumbles - which I will probably use. Nor possibility of tie situation, which I am going to use as well (with GM decision)

Ahh. Very Good. Back when all the halving maths were flying I looked at this. It helps with the math a lot, but can lead to some re-rolls (take a 101 vs a 40, becomes 50 vs. 20, there is a very good chance of at least one re-roll).

I think I will keep subtracting amount over 100 of the higher skill from both - no re-rolls but more math.

Their method keeps the math simple but with a chance of re-roll. Also it scales better at very high skills, If I am ever resolving 450 vs 350 I may switch to it. (56 to 43 in their system, 100 to 0 in mine, or 100 to 5 with a minimum chance of success - I guess it depends on whether you consider 450 to 350 'kinda close' or whether you consider 100 points to be an almost insurmountable difference).

EDIT: Upon re-reading this post I don't think it came across very strong the first time - the result curve of the method in Legendary Heros is VERY Good. The major diff between the two methods is the way the odds differ at Very High skills, one being relational and the other linear. It is matter of opinion which method is better, and if you want to see it argued at length just go back a couple months on this board and read some old posts.

 

[GoingDown]

EDIT: Upon re-reading this post I don't think it came across very strong the first time - the result curve of the method in Legendary Heros is VERY Good. The major diff between the two methods is the way the odds differ at Very High skills, one being relational and the other linear. It is matter of opinion which method is better, and if you want to see it argued at length just go back a couple months on this board and read some old posts.

For me, this is settled. I like it (the way in Legendary Heroes book), scales well, really easy. And my group likes to roll dice anyway

And besides, I don't want to participate another war about skill halving.

 

[JonGeere]

Well it is in the stores now. I've picked up a copy but found it the weakest product so far on an initial run through. The battle rules look promising, Legendary abilities less so, and the Legendary rune, artifacts and bestiary a turn off. No colour art.

Overall a climb down from Glorantha 2nd Age, Ralios and Monsters.

Saw that coming a long way! I have no plans of touching that book.

SGL.

My opinion of the book has improved with further reading, but only that Legendary Abilities and magic were slightly better than i first thought. As long as they are used as HeroQuest level stuff (i.e. very powerful and _very_ rare) then they have a place.

 

[simonh]

After halving, roll normally. If both parties fail, it is re-roll. Simple and efficient.

Well it's not as bad as the orriginal system, but it's not great.

Take a character with 96% versus a character with 50% skill. The higher skilled character has odds of about 84% of winning.

Raise the hisgher skilled character to 101% (givin g a contest of 50% Vs 25%, re-roll if both fail). The chance of the higher skilled guy winning is now 75%.

So raising his skill by 5%, has 'only' lowered his chances of winning by 9%. Ok that's a lot better than the old way when you're odds dropped by about a third, but it's not exactly brilliant. He'd have to raise his skill to about 125% to get back to the same odds again.

Now to be fair, if you're opponent is better than 50% the situation gets much better. The closer you're opponent gets to 100% skill, the better this system works, but it's still unfortunate to have any backsliding like this.

A quick fix would be to auto-increment any characetr that goes over 100% by a free bonus of an extra 10%. That would go a long way to reduce or eliminate any statistical wobbling.

 

[JonGeere]

After halving, roll normally. If both parties fail, it is re-roll. Simple and efficient.

A quick fix would be to auto-increment any characetr that goes over 100% by a free bonus of an extra 10%. That would go a long way to reduce or eliminate any statistical wobbling.

Now that is neat, simple and sounds right. Patent it!