Standard special ability, totally pointless?

[FrankTrollman]

Yeah. We know how Knight vs. Dragon is supposed to end, especially when that knight happens to be a common born lad destined for greatness who was chosen by a black unicorn and found his knightly arms in the crack of a tree.

-Frank

[PhilD]

Cainehill said:
Not to mention Elric, Conan, and all the heroes from Zelazny, George R R Martin, Robert Jordan, etc, etc.

Hehe - I agree with most of these, except George R R Martin. His heroes can mostly die a quick and painful death before they become heroes... (which is something I absolutely love about the Song of Ice and Fire series - must be a sadist)

[Cainehill]

PhilD said:

Hehe - I agree with most of these, except George R R Martin. His heroes can mostly die a quick and painful death before they become heroes... (which is something I absolutely love about the Song of Ice and Fire series - must be a sadist)

Yep. I also love the way his characters (with a _very_ few exceptions like Joffrey & the Mummers) aren't black or white - some of my favorites are nice complex shadings of gray, such as the Hound and Tyrion.

[PhilD]

Cainehill said:
Yep. I also love the way his characters (with a _very_ few exceptions like Joffrey & the Mummers) aren't black or white - some of my favorites are nice complex shadings of gray, such as the Hound and Tyrion.

Don't forget Eddard. He's a bit too good - but his role is mostly as a warning to the reader: "OK, nobody's safe in this story - watch this!"

But, having all characters somehow interesting is obviously part of the plan - you're supposed to like most of them somehow, and then they die.

[Meglobob]

Cainehill said:

Yep. I also love the way his characters (with a _very_ few exceptions like Joffrey & the Mummers) aren't black or white - some of my favorites are nice complex shadings of gray, such as the Hound and Tyrion.

Yes I am a big fan Robert Jordan and especially George R. R. Martin, his characters r fantastic. Tyrion Lannister is my favourite character, I also like Stannis Baratheon. Cannot get over how he cruely eliminated House Stark in such a brutal fashion, good to see an author willing to create such excellent characters then kill them off in such an evil fashion.

[mivayan]

Cainehill said:

Perhaps I've read different mythology, folktales, and heroic fantasy than you - Vainamoinen (spelling), Cu Culain, Robin Hood / William Tell, Lancelot, Roland, even Falstaff, or even Rasputin. Not to mention Elric, Conan, and all the heroes from Zelazny, George R R Martin, Robert Jordan, etc, etc.

Considered what a _human_ mage can accomplish in the game, superhuman abilities in the heroes don't seem that outlandish. Especially when you consider the heroic abilities even "normal" recruitable human commanders can get, and Ulm's heroes don't seem that unreasonable. They're _unique_ where Bane Lords are spawned from a limitless stock of undead

Unique but human. Heroes from books or movies could deserve to have +5 att or def or precision perhaps. But the reason main characters survive in books is the same reason James Bond does... the 12 goons shooting machine guns at him just happen to miss through sheer luck. Because otherwise it'd be a sucky story. I'm happy that dominions doesn't have that. A human against many humans... will die.

[Twan]

A dominion heroe with 30hp against many humans will die too. The hp just represent his extra faculty to survive (but in dominions the heroe will need not only these 30 hp but also regeneration or recuperation to be like James Bond and avoid to have afflictions each time he survives).

The debate here is a very old dead horse coming from RPGs, the original concept of hit points (from D&D) versus the trying-to-be-realist-rpg concept of hp (from chaosium games etc). Note that really realist games never use hp, and that games wanting James Bond like heroes in a game without increased hit points use other systems like heroic points or survival points which like D&D hit points are points representing the ability to avoid dammage.

I think giving 20-30hp to an human heroe is a correct middle ground, not going too far into the D&D concept (in which an heroic human could have more than a titan), but not making the non mage heroes as ordinary/worthless as they are.