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Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 4:06 pm
by Fizz
Hi all-

Looking around the web the other day and i came across a old-school system called Fantastic Heroes & Witchery.

Of particular note, i really like how they handle divine classes. I have never liked cleric / druid spells, feel too "wizardy" to me. Instead FH&W has a separate system of "prayers". You can pray for specific effects on the fly- not in advance- and the more times you request, the less likely it will be granted. Most of these powers cover the basics of priesthood- healing, knowledge, support, protection, etc.

Has anyone played this system or tried these classes? I am curious how people found it.


-Fizz

Re: Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 4:56 pm
by Go0gleplex
Had a house-ruled similar system for what we referred to as 'God Calls' in my AD&D game around 1993-1998. The more you bugged God the less likely your chances though the higher your level or if you had good sacrifices to go with the better your odds. Of course you could also become an annoyance and get figuratively smacked upside the head by the God you were trying to petition which was good for some laughs at times.

If this is similar to that with the spells, then it is fun playing with but can result in some mental math depending on how your chances of success are determined and if there are similar modifiers to my group's 'God Calls' that can be offsetting to some.

Re: Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 5:08 pm
by serleran
When I used a similar idea, what was invoked for the aid mattered just as much as frequency. For example, if you were asking for protection and called upon a minor entity within the faith, it was more likely to be granted than calling the Big Dude Himself. You'd get a +1 or some equivalent (depends on the system, so that it could be +10% or whatever) but even the little helpers get annoyed...

I had a chart for it.

I still use prayerbooks for clerics, though, and they can read them like scrolls.

Re: Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 5:30 pm
by Mordekai82
I agree... The cleric and druid spells are quite "wizardry", I guess that's the backlash for unifying spell casting systems... Original sin from D&D!

M.

Re: Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 10:19 pm
by Captain_K
One spell casting system... with conversion to healing automatically is a common house rule. Didn't the Tome of Magic have high level divine magic, that was a cool approach, but too high a level... give up some spells, get a powerful "god effect"... if you like winging it, you can always allow prayers to work to do anything... but that has its weaknesses too.