# The HERO System



## PCD (Apr 16, 2004)

Recently, I asked about TriStat and a few folks were nice enough to answer my questions.  So, now I am asking about the HERO System.  

Its Pros?  Cons?

Things to consider?  Advantages?  Disadvantages?

I am shopping for a "one book", good game system.  So, I am asking about the ones I know about.

Thanks.

Pete


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## barsoomcore (Apr 16, 2004)

I've run a Fantasy Hero campaign or two in my time. I like things about it, but frankly, it was pretty tedious to DM.

Maybe they've improved things since those days, but creating magic systems was something you pretty much had to do from scratch and it was a real pain.

I can't think of any real advantages the system possesses over, say, D&D. The disadvantage is that there isn't as much support material -- though converting from D&D material's not impossible. Just, again, a pain.

If I was looking for a "one book" system, I'd pick d20 Modern.


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## Hatchling Dragon (Apr 16, 2004)

I like the system, although I've only ever used it to play Champions, it's Superhero aspect.

Pro:  You *can* actualy get along with only the core book, as the rest of the material is mostly just pre-generated stuff if you want or need it (ie: time saver), be it campain setting or villians.  Not much work involved with  conversions between genres, they're all based on the exact same system, it's mostly just the window dressing (ie: Special Effects) that have changed.  CR is even there in a way, it's simply your total of Character Points, if your points and the enemies are the same then it's a pretty even match.  Flexability is the key to the HERO system, a 2d6 HKA (Hand-to-Hand Killing Attack) can be anything from a Light Saber in a Sci-Fi game to a magic sword in Fantasy, and even Claws in a Hero game, it's all the same exact rule with a change of description and 'special effect'.

Cons:  As stated, there's some book-keeping involved (charges, ENDurance left, ect.) but every Pencil and Paper game has that, it's what that paper's for after-all   Fair warning, this game _can_ be a Rules Lawyer's Happy Hunting Grounds if you don't put any limits on what PC's are allowed to use/do/be, but always remember that anything that _they_ do to you and yours you are free to do *back* to them.

I like the system over-all because you have to come to the game with a character concept, not just "I'll roll stats and see what it'll lemme be." attitude.  It's totaly what _you_ want it to be.

Have no doubt, there's a bit of a learning curve and you have to have more imagination than the standard if you want the most out of the game, but once you've gotten used to keeping track of END and charges and such it can go quite fast and smoothly.

Hatchling Dragon


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## Felon (Apr 16, 2004)

I used to among HERO System's greatest advocates. Now I think I'll never run a HERO System game again. 

HERO provides a great deal of utility for superhero games and other high-powered genres. It made a groundbreaking move in realizing that many powers that seem very different actually have the same effect as far as the game was concerned. I think they were also among the first systems (if not *the* first) to start categorizing Powers by their duration and effect. The idea of layering on advantages and limitations went a long way towards allowing players to create just about any power that you can think of. 

HERO's designers also realized that action and adventure games needed to take place outside of reality, and thus didn't fall into the grim-n-gritty trap that other systems that viewed themselves as "D&D alternatives" fell into back in the eighties and early nineties. The level of realism is for a GM to decide. In staying true to that, HERO offers lots of optional rules for making combat more deadly or more colorful, and that's probably another area where it was an innovator. 

If all of your players are great at fleshing out their character's concepts--both their strengths and their weaknesses--then HERO's an ideal system. But if you have people that want to generate a character in 5 minutes and jump in and smash and kill things, you have a problem. 

As a player, think of playing HERO kind of like playing a CCG, a la _Magic_ or _Pokemon_. In those games, the strategy has largely to do with how well you put your deck together. In HERO, you had better be the type of person who enjoys pondering over your character sheet to see where you can squeeze that 12 points you need to buy that power that's vital in defining your character. 

Like any point-based system, there's a great deal of room for exploiting the sytem and the temptation to build a kitchen-sink character that's effective in any given situation, or worse, an ugly-but-unbeatable combat god. HERO has more than its share of areas where the mechanics are just way off, and the point costs are just too high or too low. For instance, when playing Champions it's not uncommon for every single PC to have Strength scores of 30 or higher, simply because the cost of Strength is too low in respect to all of the benefits it provides. In the eyes of a powergamer, it pays for itself many times over. 

Another area full of inequities is the Disadvantage system. In theory, players earn character points in exchange for rounding out their characters with weaknesses. In practice, it can be hard for even someone with a solid design concept to come up with enough reasonable Disads to gain the maximum allowed points--and everyone wants the maximum. One of the odd design elements about this system is that most Disads seem to be of about equal point value, so for instance, a Psychological Limitation that mandates quirky behavior in certain roleplaying situations is worth about as much as a damage Vulnerability that can get your character killed. 

And the designers are quite resolute about not making any changes to the broken areas. They're too invested in them, emotionally and intellectually, to accept what needs to be done to give HERO the degree of "powergamer-tolerance" that is needed for GM's to stop giving up on it, as I did.


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## barsoomcore (Apr 16, 2004)

felon said:
			
		

> As a player, think of playing HERO kind of like playing a CCG, a la Magic or Pokemon. In those games, the strategy has largely to do with how well you put your deck together. In HERO, you had better be the type of person who enjoys pondering over your character sheet to see where you can squeeze that 12 points you need to buy that power that's vital in defining your character.



That's BRILLIANT. Very well said.

With the corollary that it then becomes the DM's job to build half-a-dozen decks (at least) every game session. It can get tiring.


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## JohnTaber (Apr 16, 2004)

*Hero Pros and Cons*

Hi Pete: I have been playing Hero for a very long time.  I'll try to answer your questions at a very high level.  You can get very involved and detailed thread on the Hero message board which is extremely active.

First some very quick background.  I have run Hero for just about every genre.  I have run multiple Fantasy Hero campaigns, several Champs campaigns, horror, science fiction, and even a time travel campaign.  I'll warn you that Hero is my favorite game system.  Part of the reason is my familiarity with it.    Keep reading.

First the good stuff...

* *Hero is extremely flexible.*  Not only can you build every genre under the sun with the same set of rules there is often more than one way to purchase the same effect.  Hero is a point based system that use a concept called a "special effect" to make the system general and flexible as all get out.  For example, there is a power called Energy Blast.  It can be used to represent Cyclops eye beams, a fireball spell, or an alien laser pistol.  VERY powerful.  This is extremely powerful for fantasy genre magic systems.  You can actually craft a complete magic system in Hero that differs from every other Fantasy Hero game.  

* *Point based character creation is cool.*  This allows each player to create the character they want but keep all characters at relatively the same starting power level.  There are no class buckets at all.  If you want a mage who can lift his horse you could do that...well...if you had the points.  Some of the points are gained from disadvantages.  This concept is VERY cool.  It allows each character to have individual hangups and such.  Maybe they are hunted by a scorned lover and have an intense hatred of orcs.  The system easily handles it.

Now some bad things...

* *The system is hard to learn initially.*  Often this can make it feel unapproachable.  Hero is trying to help by releasing products like SideKick which are scaled back versions of the full 380 page rulebook.  I personally don't feel they scaled it back enough but this is a matter of opinion.  If you want to try it find a Hero GM and play a couple of sessions.  See what you think.

* *Hero is difficult to GM as it requires lots of work initially.*  This is the back edge of the flexibility sword.  For Fantasy Hero, a GM would have to establish a magic system, work on campaign guidelines, create monsters, etc.  Granted there are support books but as everything is so customized sometimes they are not as helpful as you might think.  

Some general thoughts...

In some ways Hero is kinda like Home Depot or Home Club.  Once you learn the rules you can walk in and pick raw materials off the shelf to build the effect you want.  It may take some time to build that house from the raw materials but it is certainly possible.  The trick is that you have to know the tools but once you learn them you can build anything!   

I consider D20 more like buying from a boutique store.  You can pull the fantasy module of the shelf and start right away...but it may not be easy to build a science fiction game unless you also buy the module for that genre.

Hope this helps.


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## Felon (Apr 16, 2004)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> That's BRILLIANT. Very well said.
> 
> With the corollary that it then becomes the DM's job to build half-a-dozen decks (at least) every game session. It can get tiring.




True. I suspect that wound up being an inadvertant but effective marketing strength of HERO, in that the GM was pretty much forced to go buy supplements that provided bad-guy stat blocks.   

Btw, I had another analogy prepared that compared HERO to socialism, in that it's a pie-in-the sky system with a lot of appealing qualities, but in practice it ulitmately falls apart due to an unrealistic expectation of self-regulatory behavior on the part of everyone involved. Then I decided I didn't want to get all political.


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## Thimble the Squit (Apr 16, 2004)

I have HERO and wish I didn't.  This system ranks amongst the very few RPG purchases I regret.  Along with this, I count RIFTS and a few really cheaply produced fanboy games that I thought might deserve a bit of attention.  I also bought Synnabar because I couldn't believe it was as bad as everyone said.  Yes.  It is.  Trust me.

Over and over again, HERO extols its own virtues of simplicity and clarity -- and then proceeds to delve into the most heinously complicated, poorly constructed, over-blown jargonese that I have ever seen in any roleplaying rulebook ever.  I am an advocate of the Campaign for Plain English and, if I ever wanted to show how NOT to write clearly and concisely, I would uphold HERO as a shining example.

OK.  Maybe the 5th Edition book is better (I have a 4th ed. copy) but I cannot see how; not if it's by the same authors.  I cannot understand the game at all, so I cannot judge the game based on its rules -- and I cannot understand the game because these guys do not know how to write.

As far as I can tell, the rules are overly complicated, such that, in play, the GM will perforce be endlessly referring back to the tables in the book.  Of course, to validate this criticism would require actually playing it.  Which I simply cannot be bothered to try and do.

Sorry to all you HERO fans out there.  This is all just my opinion.  I'll rant about RIFTS next, if you like.


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## Thimble the Squit (Apr 16, 2004)

It would also help if we knew what kind of genre you're wanting to play.  If it's multigenre stuff you're after (like HERO), then I'd probably recommend GURPS, although that's not all that "one book"-ish, when you consider all the world books you can get for it...  Don't worry, though, the basic rules cover most bases.

As for *felon's* criticism above GURPS can be quite complicated too, and is also a point-buy system, like HERO.  I think it's much easier to approach, however, and certainly laid-out better.  If there are options for basic or advanced play, these are dealt with in separate sidebars or different chapters.  Character generation may still be based on purchasing advantages and disadvantages but the actual statistics are much, much easier than HERO to "wing".  There are far fewer formulae for derived attributes and you'll probably not need to look stuff up in the book more than two or three times per session.  (This is except when you're using the optional hit location / critical damage charts, 'cos I can never remember any of that kind of stuff.)

If it's a purely fantasy system you want, I'd opt for RuneQuest III (if you can find it anywhere -- check out eBay maybe), Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Earthdawn or Ars Magica.  All of these games have several sourcebooks but you really need only the main rulebooks for each.  I'd also suggest checking out the extremely wierd (and also extremely rare) Tales of Gargentihr.  It's nice.  But it's wierd.

Then again, if you want modern day, go d20 Modern, like *barsoomcore* suggests.  For sci-fi, how about either of the RPG spin-offs for Star Wars?  I didn't like Traveller: The New Era all that much (compared to its various other incarnations), but it _did_ come in a single book.

So: a bit of a clearer idea of what you're after would probably help...


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## Dragonblade (Apr 16, 2004)

HERO is my favorite system outside of d20. It has some strengths and some weaknesses.

Strengths:

1) You can craft a campaign to be EXACTLY the way you want. For example, you can make your own magic system for a fantasy game. You can completely define the feel of your campaign setting. Whether you like high magic or low magic, or something in between, you can build it exactly to your specifications. You can make your game cinematic or gritty. You can have high powered PCs, or low powered ones. Its all up to you and the game runs perfectly smooth at any power level.

2) Its all in one book. Technically everything you need to play HERO forever is in the main 5th edition hardcover rulebook. 5th edition is also much better written than the 4th edition rulebook. I also strongly recommend buying Sidekick. Sidekick is a slimmed down HERO system rulebook that you can buy for only 10 dollars!  Its a great way to introduce yourself to the system if you are leary of paying 40 for the main book and you aren't sure you will like the game. Sidekick is also great to have extra copies of at the game table. Its cheap enough that all your players can easily afford their own copy.

3) Its multi-genre friendly. You can play Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Space Opera, Super Heroes, you name it. All with the same rules and even the same characters if you wanted! Its easy to do cross-genre games such as Palladium's RIFTS with the HERO rules.

Weaknesses

1) Learning curve. HERO can be quite complex for some people. There is a lot of math and calculation of points, etc. If you like to tweak with systems and characters, then this system is for you. If you want a system that just blends into the background and allows you to start playing right away, then HERO is not for you. Although, the more experience you are with it, the more it does blend into the background.

2) DM setup time. HERO requires a large initial investment from the GM or DM before you can play. If you are a tinkerer and want to completely design your campaign world down to the smallest bit of flora and fauna then HERO is for you. If you don't want to custom design your own campaign setting, and want to be able to use a number of premade settings, or be able to easily port over existing settings using other rules with a minimum of fuss, then HERO may not be for you. Although, HERO is powerful enough that if you spend the time and you know what you are doing, you can emulate any other setting from books, movies, or other RPG companies pretty much exactly as originally portrayed.

3) Combat can be slow. HERO combat be quite slow and complex. Especially the first several times you play. It speeds up once you have played several times and start to remember all the different numbers and different types of combat actions you can take. Just be sure to have a hex map, a calculater, and the entire combat section of your book bookmarked whenever a fight breaks out.

Neutral

1) HERO games makes a lot of great supplements that prestat out a lot things you will run into when playing. If you don't mind buying some extra books, you will save A LOT of setup time. In fact, their genre books are packed full of great advice even if you aren't going to use HERO rules for your game. The drawback is of course, that buying a lot of extra books is necessary to save yourself a lot of setup time. You can buy books with prestatted vehicles, monsters, superpowers, spells, gadgets, and even a couple campaign settings.

2) HERO combat is both tactical and cinematic. To me this is an advantage. I love tactical combat. I love planning my character's every move in a battle. I also love combat that can be cinematic. For example, in a superhero game its just awesome when some big bad Hulk-like villain picks up a car, swings it at you and sends you flying back through three brick walls!! HERO not only handles these sorts of maneuvers with a high level or rules detail, but also with a very cool cinematic feel.

The drawback is combat can be slow. Especially if the group is inexperienced or there are a large number of combatants.


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## PCD (Apr 16, 2004)

Wow!

Thanks for the quick and specific replies!!!

Lots of info to ponder.

Keep it coming.

Pete


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## hong (Apr 16, 2004)

Felon said:
			
		

> If all of your players are great at fleshing out their character's concepts--both their strengths and their weaknesses--then HERO's an ideal system. But if you have people that want to generate a character in 5 minutes and jump in and smash and kill things, you have a problem.



If you don't fancy yourself as a gearhead, you could do worse than pick up Fantasy HERO and/or Ninja HERO. Lots of templates there to get you going in 5 minutes.



> As a player, think of playing HERO kind of like playing a CCG, a la _Magic_ or _Pokemon_. In those games, the strategy has largely to do with how well you put your deck together. In HERO, you had better be the type of person who enjoys pondering over your character sheet to see where you can squeeze that 12 points you need to buy that power that's vital in defining your character.



It might be said that with 3E, D&D is reaching that stage as well especially at high levels.


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## Chupacabra (Apr 16, 2004)

The joys of CREATING a HERO system character are wonderful.

The pains of RUNNING a HERO system game are often excruciating.

The system handles the supers genre par excellence.  I have yet to find a better system to run a good continuing supers game.  But the cost, oh the cost!  Cost of time that is...to create decent villains, monsters, henchmen, lairs, vehicles, etc.  It just takes tons of time to do it well.  Of course you could run out and get supplement books that give you stat blocks for all these NPCs, but then you are no longer running a "one book" game, are you?  Not an easy system to run if you like to "wing it" at times.

I only tried to GM a Fantasy Hero game once, so my experience with that sub-set of the HERO rules are quite limited.  After a few sessions, everyone got kinda disenchanted with the experience.  Character creation was fun and everyone really liked being able to create cool backstories and tweak out their characters w/o being pigeonholed into fixed character classes....But after awhile the fantasy game mechanics were just not working for us.  We felt that Warhammer FRPG or AD&D covered the much the same ground in a better way.  

Fantasy HERO was, to me, like using a fork to eat soup with: maybe you're gonna finish the bowl but you are going to make a mess doing it.  Simply the wrong tool for the job.

All in all however, you should at least borrow a copy of the HERO rules to persuse and see how you like them.  And if you are at all interested in running a Supers campaign, it's a pretty darn good system, albeit one that requires a dedicated GM.


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## Mercule (Apr 16, 2004)

I like HERO a fair bit.  It's right behind d20 in my book.  I've also got a friend who's a bit obsessive about it.

HERO is very much a one-book system.  There are suppliments out there for it, and they look like they might be helpful, but I've never picked up anything besides the core book (of course, I've usually been on the player side of the equation in HERO).  

The 4th edition book honestly reads like a dictionary.  I never made it all the way through it in eight or so years of playing it -- very much referrence only.  The fifth edition hardbound is much better, although still not as interesting as the D&D PH.  I picked it up when I had to take a week-long business trip.  Just reading it in my hotel room, I'd made it most of the way through the book by the end of the week -- without falling asleep.

HERO does have a pretty sharp learning curve, compared to D&D.  Still, it's managible.  We played it exclusively for a couple of years in college.  The first year we played supers (Champions) and had a lot of fun, but realized afterward that we'd really messed up in a couple of areas.  The second year, we did Fantasy Hero and did things much better.  I'd say that within the first couple of months of the Champions game, most of the daily mechanics (combat, damage, etc.) were second nature and pretty transparent.  Four months through the FH game (if not before) almost all of the mechanics were transparent to everyone, even the neophyte gamers.  Some of the really contorted math required the hand of a "pro-gamer", but not that often.

If you want to run a HERO game, I've got a few suggestions.  

1) Do a short-term, beer-and-pretzels (i.e. don't take it too seriously) campaign first.  This'll help everyone, especially the GM, learn the rules.  Supers works well for this because you can add a fair amount of cheese before the genre breaks.  After that, move onto somethin a bit more serious.

2) Start off with simple builds.  With HERO, you can really tweak your powers.  Avoid that tempation until you are more comfortable with the system.  This is another reason to start off with Champions.  In comics, it isn't uncommon for characters' powers to evolve over time.  The suspension of disbelief is much lower there than when a wizard starts casting spells completely differently than he used to.

3) Pick up Fantasy Hero (assuming you want fantasy).  Yeah, it's an extra book, but it's really more like a campaign design tool.  You won't usually have to take it to the game with you, and if you do, it'll be more like a Monster Manual than anything else.

I haven't seen the 5th edition version, but I assume it's similar to the 4th edition FH (actually, I've heard it's much better).  The 4E FH book had some packages that could be used like classes and races, so you've got the first few chapters of the PH right there.  There was also a premade magic system or two and a boatload of spells -- I didn't much care for the specifics of the magic, but it was no worse than the D&D Vancian system.  There were also listings of several classic fantasy monsters like dragons, orcs, etc.  I believe the book also contained a couple of fantasy-specific rules that weren't critical, but simplified things.  You can start with the FH book as a base-line and customize to taste without ever needing to buy anything else (or, probably, any great desire to do so).


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## Agback (Apr 16, 2004)

G'day

I first took up the _Hero System_ in its incarnation as _Justice, Inc._ in about 1985. I have also played and/or GMed it in its incarnations as _Champions_ (a superhero RPG), _Danger International[_ (spy/thriller), _Fantasy Hero_, and in its generic form in SF, pulp adventure, action/thriller, and non-traditional fantasy genres. Indeed, I played in a mystery/thriller SF adventure under generic _Hero System_ just last weekend. The summary of my considerable experience would be that _Hero System_ is good for superhero combat campaigns and passable for other campaigns provided (in the latter case) that the GM does a lot of work cutting the system down to suit.

I think the first problem is that the _Hero System_ gives players way too many character points for taking on disadvantages. The theory is that the points only compensate for the disadvantages, so that in theory a character with disadvantages ought to be no more or less capable overall than one who is built on base points. Experience shows that this is utter bunk: characters who do not take the maximum points allowed are not capable enough to take their places alongside characters who have gone the whole hog. This leads to the phenomenon of trolling for disadvantages, with players either forcing in irrelevant weaknesses that are not called for by the character concept, or else being driven towards bizarre character concepts. Fair enough in superheroes, bad in other games.

Another problem is that the game makes absolutely no allowance for encouraging players to take on disadvantages that improve the game (providing the GM with robust grommets for plot hooks, constraining the characters to act heroically, etc.). I find that it is bad enough that players decide that their characters are sullen jerks and insist on playing in charcter without rules support. When the rules encourage them to do it you can face a nightmare. So my advice to any GM is to use his or her powers of veto with great liberality, and to feel free, even compelled, to adjust disad points by guess, without feeling bound either by the rules or the examples. Having a code of honour is not as crippling as blindness, but blind characers are a pain in the arse to GM, and ought to be discouraged. Characters ought to be forbidden to play autistic charcters, not bribed to do so. A character nearly crippled by OCD is interesting while that is what the campaign is about (see the TV show 'Monk'), but will be a major pain for all the other players (including the GM) if they had something else in mind.

While we are in that rut, the points listed for various disads seem to me to bear little correlation to how crippling a disad actually is, but you have to change them all anyway.

On another point, the scale of character representation in _Hero System_ is not really suitable for characters in the human range. For example, there are twenty values in the human range for, say, intelligence. But only five are distinct: 1, 3, 8, 13, 18. For abstruse reasons, INT 17 is as far as teh game is concerned just an expensive kind of INT 13. And the blessed values vary from attribute to attribute: in DEX they are 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20. This is a morass, guaranteed to make sure that inexperienced players will be disapointed with their character designs.

Martial arts in _Hero System_ are grossly overpowered for 'heroic' (ie. less-than-superheroic) campaigns. Don't allow their use, or tone them down, or apply low damage caps, unless you want the pulpy feel of heroes successfully engaging in fisticuffs against soldiers armed with firearms.

The skill system in  _Hero System_ is designed to give huge rewards to generalising, with the result that wise players do not buy their skills up above base, but buy levels with categories of skills and buy those up in time to 'overall levels'. This is mmerely a manifestation of the fact that the design is fraught with clever, inobvious ways to get a lot more bang for your buck than by taking the straightforward approach. This means that the system gives a lot more power to experienced players than to novices, and that the learning curve is shallow. (Popular error aside, a steep learning curve means that people learn quickly, a shallow learning curve means that people learn slowly.)

In this rut, beware of the fact that _Hero System_ encourages players to arse about with clever tricks in which something is represented by something else with a misleading special effect. (Eg., the rules [used to] suggest that if you wanted a character who could run very fast you buy not lots of Running but Flight subject to the limitation 'only in contact with the ground'.) This sounds very powerful and flexible, but in my experience it only causes problems because it means that things don't work that ought to or work that ought not to. And therefore leads reliably to tears before bedtime. For instance, a tanglefoot bag bought as 'Suppress [Running]' would not work on 'Flight [only in contact with the ground]', even though by world logic it ought to. Similarly, if you design a character who has a field that turns everything around him 'Desolid [area effect, usuable against others, uncontrollably continuous, no range]', you will find that you need to add in a lot of 'Missile Deflection' with the special effect that the missiles turn desolid without the charcter seeming to do anything about this. By game rules this character is susceptible to heavy missiles thrown from outside his or her area of effect, but don't count on the players to work that out, because in world terms it doesn't make sense.

Before _Hero System_ was genericised, when it appeared with 'heroic' rules in different products from its superhero rules the heroic versions used to have an excellent set of rules for characters concealing weapons around their perssons. For some reason, these were not taken up into the generic game, which is a great pity. Nowadays a Desert Eagle is just as concealable as a Beretta .25 with a skeleton grip, and a pistol in a belt clip is just as discreet as on in a small-of-back or anle holster.

The _Hero System_ system of superhero powers, limitations, and power advantages (and, to a lesser extent, martial arts manoeuvres) is very flexible and powerful. In fact, it is easily flexible and powerful enough to tear a hole in your campaign world. To apply restrictions on what powers players can buy, impose caps on their power levels, and lay down compulsory limitations and disadvantages requires some work and care, and worse, considerable familiarity with the system. It is best as a start to lay down a limited menu of things that magicians &c. can do.

Finally, like a depressing majority of RPGs, _Hero System_ has no specific rules for anything that happens outside of combat. And quite a lot of powers that are well balanced in combat are devastatingly effective at non-combat tasks.

So: it isn't the game I play by choice. But you can make it work if you want to.

Regards,


Agback


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## Darkness (Apr 16, 2004)

Thimble the Squit said:
			
		

> ... GURPS can be quite complicated too, and is also a point-buy system, like HERO. I think it's much easier to approach, however, and certainly laid-out better. If there are options for basic or advanced play, these are dealt with in separate sidebars or different chapters. Character generation may still be based on purchasing advantages and disadvantages but the actual statistics are much, much easier than HERO to "wing". There are far fewer formulae for derived attributes and you'll probably not need to look stuff up in the book more than two or three times per session. (This is except when you're using the optional hit location / critical damage charts, 'cos I can never remember any of that kind of stuff.)



 GURPS hasn't aged well. Right now, the system is quite unbalanced (e.g., Attribute Costs) and overcomplicated (e.g., the skill list).

However, they'll be fixing a lot of GURPS' problems in the upcoming 4th edition, due this August.


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## Sir Whiskers (Apr 16, 2004)

First, check out the Hero Games website. There's a ton of free material to give you an idea of what the system is about. Here's a link to an intro pdf:

http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/freedocs.htm

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Next, a little history. Hero system began as Champions, a superhero rpg. It was revolutionary in many ways, and did a great job creating the comic book genre. The rules, however, were in need of serious balancing. Other supplements came out, including for the wild west and espionage.

Champions II followed and was an improvement, but the system (IMO) didn't really come into its own until *3rd Edition*. This edition cleaned up and consolidated a lot of the rules. Instead of separate rulebooks for different genres, everything was included in the main book. The worst complaint I can make is that the binding was lousy, so the book fell apart fairly quickly.

Fourth Edition (IIRC, called Fuzion) appears to have been a bit of a waste. I glanced at the rules, but never used the system. As another poster said, they weren't terribly well written. Ironic, since the idea was to make the system simpler...

Fifth Edition is the latest. The rulebook is fairly well organized and, best of all, has tons of examples of powers, rules, and campaign ideas. The system also has a lot of support - if you're going to use the system for superhero gaming, definitely pick up _Champions_, and consider _Millennium City_ (a city book) and _Conquerors, Killers, and Crooks_ (a villain book). There's also quite a bit of free material on Hero Games website. If you want a character creation program, Hero Designer 2 is available - I'm still not completely sold on this product, but for now I'm forcing my group (including me, the GM) to use it, to give it a fair test.

----------------------

Last, for my take. I agree that Hero System isn't for everyone. If you're the type who loves designing new mechs in Battletech, or always wanted to design your own ships in Star Fleet Battles, or enjoys spending hours designing characters in your favorite rpg, you'll probably like this game. It's perfect for the person who likes to tinker under hood, so to speak.

The system is incredibly flexible, and has the potential to create virtually any character concept you can imagine. No multiclassing to have your character fit your concept - just design him/her the way you want. Drawback: the system can be broken in so many ways. I recently had one player suggest (as a joke) creating a character with 60 points in Presence. The way the system works, he would basically walk into a room, make a presence attack, and every enemy would fall down in awe. My response: Uh...No. Bottom line: the GM has to exert considerable control over character creation. Having mature players who don't go overboard helps.

Combat is very cinematic, but favors those who approach it tactically. A player used to a more free-flow, storytelling environment will likely be lost. I prefer tactical combat, so I favor this system. Now while combat is tactical, flavor isn't lost. Nothing is more fun than knocking the super-villainess through a wall (or two) while fighting on the 30th floor of a skyscraper - the thud when she hit the ground below was sooooo satisfying. 

And as others have said, it's much easier to customize a campaign with the system, than with (for example) a more rigid system such as 3E. If you want a low-magic D&D campaign, you'll need a lot of house rules. In Hero, you just lower the point totals and design a low-powered magic system. In effect, you don't change the basic rules of the game so much as choose which options to use/allow. Of course, that flexibility comes at the cost of forcing the GM to design an awful lot from scratch. Remember what I said above about spending hours designing stuff? Count on it.

Finally, IMO the system is better for superhero campaigns than fantasy. I've GM'd and played in both, and I like the system - a lot. In fact, I gamed with a group in the 80's and early 90's that didn't play D&D at all, because we spent all our time with Champions and Fantasy Hero. But there's much less work for the GM in a superhero campaign, and the "feel" of the system seems to fit that genre better.


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## PCD (Apr 16, 2004)

It would seem that a lot of you have a lot of experience. I am glad I asked the question!

Again, thanks for the info.

Hmmm...it would appear that the biggest weakness HERO has is the same a lot of games have: it takes a lot of time.


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## Dogbrain (Apr 16, 2004)

Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> Champions II followed and was an improvement, but the system (IMO) didn't really come into its own until *3rd Edition*.




Actually _Champions II_ was a supplement, distinct from the second edition of the _Champions_ game.  It grafted on a lot of stuff that did not work well with _Champions_ until the complete rewrite of the third edition, at which time it was folded into the main rules.



> Fourth Edition (IIRC, called Fuzion)




Fuzion was a separate rule system that came after the 4th edition of the Hero/_Champions_ rules.  The company that owned the system (I forget who it was by that point) had officially abandoned the Hero system and was trying to sell everybody on Fuzion, which was not quite compatible with Hero.




> Fifth Edition is the latest. The rulebook is fairly well organized and, best of all, has tons of examples of powers, rules, and campaign ideas.




With only a few exceptions, the fifth edition is mechanically identical to the fourth--it's better written, though.




> The system is incredibly flexible, and has the potential to create virtually any character concept you can imagine.




Except for speedsters who operate just like the Flash does...  (That's an old problem with the game that has never been adequately addressed.  All attempts fall flat in one area or another, most of them having to do with Hero system's phased movement rules.)



> I recently had one player suggest (as a joke) creating a character with 60 points in Presence. The way the system works, he would basically walk into a room, make a presence attack, and every enemy would fall down in awe.




Sound like "Impressive Man".  He walked around naked all the time and was very--"impressive".  He also had an "entangle" attack that I will not describe.


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## Felon (Apr 16, 2004)

Chupacabra said:
			
		

> I only tried to GM a Fantasy Hero game once, so my experience with that sub-set of the HERO rules are quite limited.  After a few sessions, everyone got kinda disenchanted with the experience.  Character creation was fun and everyone really liked being able to create cool backstories and tweak out their characters w/o being pigeonholed into fixed character classes....But after awhile the fantasy game mechanics were just not working for us.  We felt that Warhammer FRPG or AD&D covered the much the same ground in a better way.
> 
> Fantasy HERO was, to me, like using a fork to eat soup with: maybe you're gonna finish the bowl but you are going to make a mess doing it.  Simply the wrong tool for the job.




Yes, I have to agree. I've yet to see Fantasy Hero magic system that was ever worth a darn. The big problem is that the point-cost of powers in HERO only reflect their value in the superhero genre. Some things are too cheap, like sensory powers (Invisibility, Darkness, Enhanced Senses) and movement powers (Flight, Teleportation). OTOH, offensive powers that do direct damage are pretty expensive for what they do; a wizard's magic missile costs END, requires Concentration at 1/2 DCV as well as a successful magic skill check, and inflicts damage on the caster if the skill check fails, yet it only does the same damage as an arrow and costs 7 character points? What a gyp!


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 16, 2004)

I am down with Dogbrains explanations except for the speedster...You just gotta be more creative  

I currently run a Fantasy Hero game and have started a Story Hour based on it, I just did not label it as such. I am also behind a week on posting to it.

Anyway back on topic. I have always held that Hero worked best in Modern or Supers and even swore at one point that I would never run another FH game but then they changed the magic rules and gave me some ideas. Suddenly, the system that I loved the most could be used for the genre I love the most. I have not been disappointed.

I would 100% say that you need fantasy Hero before you try to run a fantasy game in the system. It is not a game that you "grok" until you have played it a few times. The rules become much easier after some play -- much more so than d20 for me. 

There are some really good sites for Fantasy Hero on the web - nothing like ENworld but some good sites none the less. I and a few others are also regulars on the Hero boards where they have a Fantasy Hero section so feel free to drop by and discuss "how do you do this?" 

If you have any questions for an active FH DM drop me a line.


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 16, 2004)

Felon said:
			
		

> Yes, I have to agree. I've yet to see Fantasy Hero magic system that was ever worth a darn. The big problem is that the point-cost of powers in HERO only reflect their value in the superhero genre. Some things are too cheap, like sensory powers (Invisibility, Darkness, Enhanced Senses) and movement powers (Flight, Teleportation). OTOH, offensive powers that do direct damage are pretty expensive for what they do; a wizard's magic missile costs END, requires Concentration at 1/2 DCV as well as a successful magic skill check, and inflicts damage on the caster if the skill check fails, yet it only does the same damage as an arrow and costs 7 character points? What a gyp!




Some small quibbles....Flight and T-Port are terribly expensive but sensory powers generally are not.

Attack powers - Still reasonibly cheap but granted the archer did not have to pay for his bow.

Cost - this is dramatically different in 5E FH. I like it because I thought without a cost break magic was out of reach. Others do not like it but it is hero, you can always use a different rule.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 16, 2004)

Thimble the Squit said:
			
		

> Over and over again, HERO extols its own virtues of simplicity and clarity -- and then proceeds to delve into the most heinously complicated, poorly constructed, over-blown jargonese that I have ever seen in any roleplaying rulebook ever.  I am an advocate of the Campaign for Plain English and, if I ever wanted to show how NOT to write clearly and concisely, I would uphold HERO as a shining example.
> 
> OK.  Maybe the 5th Edition book is better (I have a 4th ed. copy) but I cannot see how; not if it's by the same authors.



Actually, it isn't. Hero Games was sold to DOJ Games in 1999 (I think). 5th ed was written by Steven Long and contains lots and lots of examples compared to the 4th ed book. I would also recommend to anyone thinking about HERO to pick up a book called Sidekick by Hero Games. Sidekick is a 128 page, $10 streamlined version of the rules. Some might call it dumbed down since it skips over some of the more complicated constructs but it is a completely playable RPG as long as your character builds are not too weird. And once you've mastered Sidekick, you can graduate to the HERO System rulebook in all its 370+ page glory. At which point you use your copy of Sidekick to lure people into playing HERO with you.



			
				Felon said:
			
		

> Another area full of inequities is the Disadvantage system. In theory, players earn character points in exchange for rounding out their characters with weaknesses. In practice, it can be hard for even someone with a solid design concept to come up with enough reasonable Disads to gain the maximum allowed points--and everyone wants the maximum. One of the odd design elements about this system is that most Disads seem to be of about equal point value, so for instance, a Psychological Limitation that mandates quirky behavior in certain roleplaying situations is worth about as much as a damage Vulnerability that can get your character killed.
> 
> And the designers are quite resolute about not making any changes to the broken areas. They're too invested in them, emotionally and intellectually, to accept what needs to be done to give HERO the degree of "powergamer-tolerance" that is needed for GM's to stop giving up on it, as I did.



Of course, this is the other area of HERO that can shine with tolerant players. Don't like the balance of one of the core powers. Change it's point cost. My own problem power is Entangle. I double the advantage cost of any Area of Effect advantage placed on Entangle because AoE combined with a low effect Entangle is just a bunch of helpless villains eating Haymakers turn after turn. (Sorry, that's a bit too HERO specific isn't it?)

Point is, if you think Vulnerability is too cheap, up it. If you don't want players scrounging for disads, change your base character costs. Just because the book says Superheroes start at 100 base/150 disad points doesn't mean you can't play your game as 150 base/100 disad.


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## jmucchiello (Apr 16, 2004)

Dogbrain said:
			
		

> Except for speedsters who operate just like the Flash does...  (That's an old problem with the game that has never been adequately addressed.  All attempts fall flat in one area or another, most of them having to do with Hero system's phased movement rules.)



Depends on the point scale. You can't do Superman justice without about 500-600 character points. (And a pre-crisis Superman could be 800 character points easily.) A 500 character point Flash is not a problem. 5e has the (controversial) megascale advantage that will let you create a Flash who can run around the world in a few segments. (And again we aren't talking pre-crisis here, are we?)


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## jmucchiello (Apr 16, 2004)

Darkness said:
			
		

> GURPS hasn't aged well. Right now, the system is quite unbalanced (e.g., Attribute Costs) and overcomplicated (e.g., the skill list).
> 
> However, they'll be fixing a lot of GURPS' problems in the upcoming 4th edition, due this August.



However, at that point it will be a two book system. Basic Set 1 is the PHB and Basic set 2 is the DMG.


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## Lord_Anthrax (Apr 16, 2004)

HERO is, in terms of its built-in flexibility, THE game system. If you can think of it, you can build it in HERO, probably in about half a dozen different ways. One of the biggest things about HERO is that it holds no bars. Things that would be suicidal to include in other game systems are present in HERO, such as the aforementioned MegaScale power advantage. The nice thing HERO does do, however, is clearly mark things which could break your game, and things that will break your game unless you are very, VERY careful about their application. More than any other game I've seen, HERO requires a tight control on the part of the GM over what players can and cannot do. Otherwise players will be players and HERO turns into the biggest min/max-fest I've ever seen.

HERO also entails a lot of bookkeeping and has a fairly steep learning curve, given the vastness and depth you can create with it. However, I've found after years of playing Generic RPG's(such as GURPS)that games like HERO lose a lot of the flavor you get with more specialized game systems, such as D&D.
As Isaac Asimov once said, "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a live frog. The understanding is gained, but the thing usually dies in the process." So too dies some of the mystery and wonder you get with a more specific system.

That said, if you want to play a game that really gets under the hood and accounts for just about any variable you can imagine, HERO is it. No other comes close to it. Otherwise, you might be happier with a simpler system.


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## Thanee (Apr 16, 2004)

While HERO is a multi-genre system, I also think it's best for the superhero genre, especially since the skill system is quite simple.

Of course, the power system allows _everything_ to be done, but as someone else said, it's laid out and balanced for superhero campaigns.

Anyways HERO is by far the best point-buy system in existance. Of course, this also means, that it is one of the most complex (it's very easy to understand, actually, but so complex, that you will overlook a lot of stuff, if you are not used to it ).

The HERO system could be seen as a tool to create a game, not as a game itself. By that it's fairly different (and surely disappointing to some) than any other system in existance.

The primary purpose of the genrebooks is to help with all the work by precreating several items, spells, abilities, class concepts, packages, etc. that can be used readily.

Bye
Thanee

P.S. HERO 4th is not Fuzion. Fuzion is a conglomerate of HERO 4th and Interlock.


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## Sir Whiskers (Apr 16, 2004)

Dogbrain said:
			
		

> Actually _Champions II_ was a supplement, distinct from the second edition of the _Champions_ game.  It grafted on a lot of stuff that did not work well with _Champions_ until the complete rewrite of the third edition, at which time it was folded into the main rules.
> 
> Fuzion was a separate rule system that came after the 4th edition of the Hero/_Champions_ rules.  The company that owned the system (I forget who it was by that point) had officially abandoned the Hero system and was trying to sell everybody on Fuzion, which was not quite compatible with Hero.
> 
> With only a few exceptions, the fifth edition is mechanically identical to the fourth--it's better written, though.




Thanks for the corrections. The memory's the first thing to go...


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## buzz (Apr 16, 2004)

FYI, HERO is pretty much favorite system, jockeying with d20 for said honor.



			
				jmucchiello said:
			
		

> I would also recommend to anyone thinking about HERO to pick up a book called Sidekick by Hero Games. Sidekick is a 128 page, $10 streamlined version of the rules. Some might call it dumbed down since it skips over some of the more complicated constructs but it is a completely playable RPG as long as your character builds are not too weird. And once you've mastered Sidekick, you can graduate to the HERO System rulebook in all its 370+ page glory. At which point you use your copy of Sidekick to lure people into playing HERO with you.



Beat me to it. 

There has never been a better time to check out HERO. Steve Long and co. are caffeinated robots who pump out a *lot* of support material, contrary to what's been said above, all of which is written much more clearly than previous editions. Included in this is _Sidekick_, which as mentioned above, is basically HERO's learning edition and a great buy. I know people who've moved to using _Sidekick_ exclusively as a "lite" version of their favorite game.

So, if you're considering HERO, start there.

Is HERO complex? During chargen, it can get overwhelming when you first use it. You have so many options that are wide open to you, it can be daunting to figure out where to put your points. If you're a GM, this becomes more of an issue of course... unless you don't worry about making the points add up (e.g., you don't need to know exactly where all the Disadvantage points came from for a one-shot villain; as long as you have combat stats and any pertinent vulnerabilties, you're good to go).

In play, though, I haven't found it any more complex than d20. In some ways, I find it a little easier, really. I tend to scribble way more notes and juggle situational modifiers (that I end up forgetting half the time) a lot more when I play D&D. I haven't seen combats take any longer either; usually less. Granted, I've got a 20+ year HERO vet GMing my game. 

In general, I can't reccomend it enough. It's the mother of all point-based systems. It can handle more genres out of the box (no, it's not just for supers), with greater facility, than any other rules-heavy system I've seen. The staff of Hero Games is incredibly communicative and helpful; they crank out excellent books, yet still spend tons of time monitoring their forums. The supers campaign I've been in for the last year has been one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

Anyway, take a look at _Sidekick_. You can buy it online at places like http://www.frpgames.com for $7.99. If you like what you see, stick with it and run a game. If you're still happy, start checking out some of the sourcebooks. Eventually, if you're still happy, move on to the main HERO core book and start mainlining that sucka!


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## Sketchpad (Apr 16, 2004)

I've been a fan of Hero for years   While I've been running d20 for the last 4 years, I've recently picked up 5th ed and found it a great book!  Streamlined from 4th ed, the newest edition is a monster book which goes under the title of a "Toolkit" and that's exactly what it is.  You can build any campaign with this system and there are already a ton of campaigns in the work ... from Fantasy Hero to Star Hero to Champions and many, many more in the works.  Author Steve Long said in a recent chat that the newest of genre books, Dark Champions, will include military packages for use in Hero ... allowing GMs to run a more modern adventure saga.  
How hard is Hero?  Well, for someone just getting into gaming, I would say it's intimidating ... but really hard?  I never found it that way and I learned it when I was 15 (you know, back in the stone age).  With the resources on the web, one of the best character programs made and a wealth of material kicked out by Steve Long on a fairly steady basis... make mine Hero  
Do I still run d20?  Yup ... for odd things and various campaigns we've been playing.  It's a good system, but I'm hoping with 4e we'll see things escape the box ... make it easier to create balanced classes, magic items and species ... d20 needs construction rule.


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## buzz (Apr 16, 2004)

Sketchpad said:
			
		

> ...one of the best character programs made...



Oo! I have to second this. Hero Designer is fantastic. I mean, it actually works.  It also runs quite speedy for a Java app. And, as with the rest of the HG staff, the programmer is very responsive to bug reports.


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## Sketchpad (Apr 16, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> Oo! I have to second this. Hero Designer is fantastic. I mean, it actually works.  It also runs quite speedy for a Java app. And, as with the rest of the HG staff, the programmer is very responsive to bug reports.



IMHO, Steve Long is one of the most responsive designers in the biz ... He posts nearly every day and has a board where you can ask him questions, which he usually answers every morning.   The man's a machine I tell ya


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## Rackhir (Apr 16, 2004)

Like many of the commentors, to me Hero System is hands down the best Superhero RPG ever. Nothing I've seen even comes close to it. It does break down if you want characters who have absolute powers. Such as "Totally Invunerable", with out spending horrific amounts of points, but all systems break down at some point if you push it to an edge.

RE: Complexity - I really don't think that Champions is more complex to DM and Play than D20 is for example. In some respects it's actually easier, since you don't have books and books of spells, feats and magic items to sort through (Granted there is 1 MASSIVE book). Generally speaking a champions character has everything they can do on their character sheet, right in front of them. Combat isn't more difficult, in fact D20's combat system seems to me to be derived from a lot of the mechanics ideas Champions introduced to RPGs. 

The thing that can make Champions more difficult to play is due more to the enviroment than the system. If you are running superheroes, you are dealing with a far more open and less controllable situation. A lot of D&D comes down to characters marching through 10' wide corredors, obviously that's a lot more limiting than when characters are leaping/flying/running/T-porting/swinging/etc... through the concrete canyons of a city.

Character creation is one of the things that people often hold up as examples of the complexity of Hero system. Which is really not accurate. 

The basic mechanics of the system are actually quite simple, 5/10/15 Char Points for 1d6 of effectiveness for offensive powers and secondary powers powers that involve die rolling for effectiveness. Skills and such run on a similar system based off of 3 points for 11 or less roll +Stat Mods. etc... What makes it seem complex are two things.

1) There are A TON OF OPTIONS, so some people slip into a paralysis of choice.
2) Power Advantages and Disadvantages - These are probably what most intimidate people since they involve multiplication and division, which most people haven't used much since they graduated from high school. Not to mention that there are a lot of people who fear/are uncomfortable with math. 

The math problem is actually fairly easy to solve. Anyone with a basic knowledge of spreadsheets can whip up one to do the math for you and they can be found on the net without a difficult search if you don't wish to make your own. 

Hero games also makes a book called "The UNTIL Superpowers Database" which is a thourough and complete guide to the various types of superheroes, complete with examples and explanations of powers and how to achive various effects commonly seen for that type of characters. It really does make it pretty simple to put together a superhero of almost any type.

Finally there is the aformentioned HERO Designer, which gives you everthing you could ask for at your fingertips. 

The idea of starting off with a "Beer and Pretzels" kind of campaign to get used to things is a good one. When playing a new system there are always adjustments that need to be made to playing styles and problems/opportunities in character design/playing that aren't immediately obvious. 

In short if you've managed to learn one RPG system, then learning Champions is not a difficult task. Once you have learned it then you can create virtually any kind of superhero you could dream of. It really is a very elegant and powerful creation tool. The roleplaying then is up to you and your DM.


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## Kannik (Apr 16, 2004)

*Mmmmmm, HERO*

Many others have already made points, so I'll try not to repeat too much.  }  I only started playing HERO in the Big Blue Book-era (BBB, the 4th edition) so my experience is more recent and less about the early days not-so-goodness, but that having been said the 5th ed (Fifth Rules Editition, or FREd) as a book is excellent -- still a bit dry and the layout's not fancy but there are about a tonne or two of examples of how to build things, and the index is a standard that all game companies should aspire to.  And the supplements are fantastic, with a whole tonne of advice, examples, pre-made things, etc.  HERO support is also something that many companies should aspire to --  the number of super-think books HERO has put out in a few years is astounding.

No surprise, I too count HERO's flexibility as its greatest point.  No need to multiclass wierdly (no classes at all, hooray!), or devise a PrC (humourously added to DnD to get around the limiations of classes), or etc -- you want to do something, so long as the GM approves it, you can do it.  A light fighter?  No problem.  A person who has only a few utility spells, mostly fights with big weapons?  Go for it.  

WRT HERO being complex, or, more specifically, math complex:  not really.  Addition/Subtraction/Multiplication/Division is all you need to know.  The first two are already required in all other games, the last two can easily be done with a calculator if one isn't keen on using the provided tables and/or on paper.  And all those need only be done during character creation.  During game play, the math isn't more difficult than any other game (+/- only).  True, there may be more to keep track of, but most of the 'detail' are optional rules, and there are plenty of other optional rules to simplify as well.  How much you want to have depends on your style of play.

Two things that may give new players pause is this:  one, understanding the idea of an effects-based system (ie, you pick the effect you want, then define how that happens/what it looks like, rather than picking an ice-bolt spell or a fist-of-doom feat), and just the fact that you really CAN do anything -- too much choice is like the blank page.  It can lead one to sit and stare blankly, with no starting point.  }

HERO really was made for Champions;  there are certain things that need to be tweaked to make it work in different genres.  Of course, one should pick up the various genre books if they'll run a game in that genre, and that provides a lot of help.  While it is commendable to try to keep point costs the same accross all genres, I think they could've done a good deed by providing an option to change certain costs to help mold the rules into each genre.  

Is HERO a rules-"optimizer"'s dream?  Yep.  Been there, done that.  }  Is it worse than DnD?  Maybe -- but check out the power gamer/smackdown/etc forums/threads for DnD and you'll see that it isn't impossible to break the system as well.  In many ways, it can be harder to catch in DnD since everything is in separate books and are all 'special conditions', ie, feats and classes and rules that due to the nature of class-based system are independant.  The designers can't really check to make sure that combining A with B won't make A*B isntead of A+B in terms of effectiveness.  With HERO, all the special thigns are in the main book.  That isn't to say there are not broken combinations, even in the basic stats (*cough*strength*cough*), or that the GM needn't stay on their toes, but its not necessarily worse than DnD.  And for those who say Core Only! in DnD can as easily say No Frameworks! or Max 1.5 Limitations! in HERO.  }

Also, in some ways, one might find powers more balanced in a more limited Fantasy Hero setting than the unbridled champions.

The Fantasy Phonebook (aka the Fantasy Hero supplement) is an amazing tome of options, and is great for almost any system on its info alone.    For HERO, there are 13 or so magic systems as examples (and the Fantasy Grimoire book has 5 billion spells), shows how to emulate many feats from d20 in HERO terms, and provides 'look out for's and 'if you change this, this could be the result' and 'if the campaign tone is this, then this is good'.  Its actually  MORE pages than the main rulebook.  Its scary and cool at the same time }

Also, one thing to remember (because some seem to make this assumption) is that just because you CAN stat everything out in HERO, doesn't mean you HAVE to.  Yes, handcuffs are 2d6 Entangle, Def 3, Persistant, OIF Breakable, etc, etc -- unless it's important (your characters are trying to break out of them) they're just handcuffs, they just work -- its the same as any other system.  A door is a door until you need to know if you can chop through it.

This is getting longer than I expected it to.   

The short of it:

Is HERO flawless?  No.  But then, few other systems are.  

Does HERO have a big learning curve?  Maybe -- lots of options, but they are options, and char creation can be fine if you have a good grasp of calculator.  

What does HERO provide that d20 or others may not?  The easiest route to limitless character concepts and flexibility.  A set of coherent rules that are linked and thus have the potential to be more inherrently balanced than individual-cases tacked onto the core system, be it for weapons, special attacks or magic.

Does HERO make more work for the GM?  Debatable.  Certainly, if not using a pre-packaged campaign, there may be more work at the start to set up all the limitations and etc, but the genre books help tremendously in this regard.  Making up enemies and NPCs may be tougher -- but at the same time unless you really care about the point cost, not by much.  You should have a general idea based on the NPC's attacks/defences how strong they are.  Does it matter if they cost 5 points or 50?  What matters is if it does 5d6RKA AP Penetrating AF5 AE Radius or if it does 3d6N.   

Like all systems that claim to be 'Generic' or 'Universal', HERO actually works best as written under certain types of games (and thus isn't really universal).  But with the options provided in the Genre books it can still work extrordinarily well in many campaigns, and the benifits of flexibility can shine through.  

Kannik


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## Jhamin (Apr 16, 2004)

Kannik has very eloquently laid out alot of my own beliefs.  

I alternate between a Hero (Champions) game and a D&D 3.5 campaign as my main two campaigns, so I can speak with some knowledge of how it is to run them both.  A few points:

 - There _is_ alot of book keeping at character creation, but this is misleading.  Beginning hero characters are alot more capable than beginning D20 characters.  It may be more accurate to compare making a hero character to making a 6-8th level D20 character (Including Wealth/Equipment, feats, attribute improvements, multiclassing/prestige classes)

 - Combat _is_ complex, but one again you have to compare it to a high level d20 battle that involves lots of spells, feats and class powers.  
A hero system fantasy wizard who has to decide if he should cast one spell or another based on his remaining endurance and what defences that hero barbarian likely has vs. his active point levels is no more complex than a D20 wizard who is balancing casting lightning bolt or charm person and deciding how many spells he has left and what the barbarian's will and reflex saves are vs. the DCs of his spells.

 - There have been alot of comments about plaing hero being all about how you bought your character, that the actual play is less important than character creation.  In my mind this means these players have not been playing or creating characters in a well run game.
Hero's greatest strength and greatest weakness are it's flexibility.  The GM is absolutly required to set a tone and a power level for his game, and in my experience the players have to make their PCs together so they all are able to do what the player envisions them doing relative to the other PCs.  Once you get a good bunch of characters and the GM knows what level to set the opposition at, the game runs just as well as D20, with the added bonus of working the way you wanted it to without having to worry about how all this will mesh with the next splat book.
*D20 takes the approach that if you are level 7, then pretty much any combination of level 7 characters can form a party with you and you can go adventuring together.  If you are the fighter, then you are a better swordsman than the Bard.  It's just part of the game.
*In Hero, then you have to decide what "powerful" is and what sort of a game you are running.  If you are playing Fantasy Hero and want to have a really strong PC do you need to be Wulfgar/Caramon strong?  Or Conan Strong?  Or Rock Troll Strong?  Or Anime Guy/Inuyasha Strong?  Or Dragon Ball Z/Super Saiyan Strong?  Hero can do any of these, and all are valid characters, It's just that if you made Matthew Broderick from Ladyhawk and somebody else made Legolas from LOTR, and the GM wants to run a game like the Princess Bride, nobody will like the game.

 - Creating all the opposition all the time for every game is indeed very tiresome.  But just like I can't imagine running 3.5 without the Monster Manual and the NPC charts from the DMG, there is no way I can imagine running Fantasy hero without the Hero System Bestiary and Monsters, Minions & Marauders.
While Hero can be a one book game, you certanly don't have to run it that way.  In fact if you are a newcomer to the system you probably need one of the Genre books and a couple of the supplaments that support it.
If you are a D20 player with a world book, three class books, two monster books, and three books filled with spells, then it's no fair to say that Hero's one book doesn't spell it all out for you.  You have to include all the supporting books for them as well.


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## buzz (Apr 16, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> The idea of starting off with a "Beer and Pretzels" kind of campaign to get used to things is a good one.



Indeed. Ideally, I think it's a good idea to start off with something other than supers, as supers tends to use "kitchen sink" levels of the options HERO has to offer. This can be overwhelming. Starting off with modern action, pulp, or low-magic fantasy (i.e., games that won't rely heavily on Powers) might prove a bit more manageable.


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## Jhamin (Apr 16, 2004)

My previous post was pretty specific.  This is more general.

Hero isn't for everyone.  If you play D20 and have no complaints, then there is no reason for you to switch.

If on the other hand you are bothered by D20's class/level based system, and just wish you could make somebody an expert in something without giving him a bunch of class levels you don't want him to have, then a Point based system may be for you.

If you decide you want a point based system, then the two big ones are GURPS and Hero.  They both do most genres well, but they both tend to do better at one end of the power level, and break down at the other.

Gurps does gritty really, really well.  If you want to stab James Bond, Conan, Indiana Jones, or whoever and have them die (He's only a man!) then GURPS is likely for you.  It's very realistic, and suits games where guns kill people alot and even the best fighters avoid combat because of how much its hurts.
Gurps does a good job on games where everyone has similar powerset but still needs to be a distinct character (Everyone is a Space Marine, or a Cop, or a Starfleet Officer, etc.)

If you want James Bond, Conan, or Indiana Jones to take on hordes of Spectre agents, Asgardians, or Nazi's at once then Hero is likely for you.  It's very, well, Heroic.  It suits games where heroes run through hails of gunfire, grimace when they get shot (But can shoot others and have them drop) and combat is swashbuckling while still rewarding tactics over derring-do.
Hero does a good job on games where everyone has weird abilites, but they all adventure together and all contribute (Anime like Inuyasha, Final Fantasyesqe games, Mid-late seasons of Buffy, etc)


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## mmadsen (Apr 16, 2004)

Awhile back, on RPGnet's Art of Game Design forum, I started a thread, Streamlining Hero, with the following thesis: *Champions has many great ideas, but few of them require the kind of complexity the system's known for.*  The flexibility's wonderful, but most of the calculations are useless; they provide a reassuring but false precision.  The numbers must mean something very, very important, right?


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## WayneLigon (Apr 16, 2004)

PCD said:
			
		

> I am shopping for a "one book", good game system. So, I am asking about the ones I know about.



HERO is excellent for the superhero genre, and really tries to do the kitchen sink approach, but I've found it lacking for low level fantasy play, espionage, or anything where you're dealing with normal humans. 5th ed is better in that regard, but not as good as it could (or should) be. 

If you're shopping for a 'one ring to rule them all' system, you might be a little disappointed. So far, I've not found one. Then again, trying to model superheroes and _anything else_ together is an exercise that seems destined to end in tears and designers throwing themselves in front of subway trains. 

Hero: Excellent for supers and more fantastic genres
GURPS: Better for more realistic play - 4th ed is suppose to address the superpowers problem; we'll see what they do.
Tri-Stat: Best for the rules-light approach
FUDGE: Don't know too much about it, really.


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## buzz (Apr 16, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> *Champions has many great ideas, but few of them require the kind of complexity the system's known for.*  The flexibility's wonderful, but most of the calculations are useless; they provide a reassuring but false precision.  The numbers must mean something very, very important, right?



While I really hate possibly turning this into the kind of HERO thread usually found on RPG.net, I have to ask: How do you determine what's "required" and which calculations are "useless"?

I'll be honest and say right up front, I'm probably not going to agree with you. See, I'm a drooling HERO fanboy, and I don't know any better.


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## mmadsen (Apr 16, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> How do you determine what's "required" and which calculations are "useless"?



For an entirely too detailed response, by all means, read the Streamlining Hero thread.

In a nutshell, Hero uses redundant stats (e.g., Body, Con, PD, ED, and Stun for "toughness") and falsely precise stat values (e.g. Int 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, they're all functionally the same).  It also tracks too many numbers in combat (Body, Stun, and End, as well as charges, the Spd chart, etc.) and relies on quirky, slow die mechanics.

The genius of Hero was in the flexibility of the power-design process (not in the number-crunching involved).


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## Chuk (Apr 16, 2004)

Thimble the Squit said:
			
		

> Over and over again, HERO extols its own virtues of simplicity and clarity -- and then proceeds to delve into the most heinously complicated, poorly constructed, over-blown jargonese that I have ever seen in any roleplaying rulebook ever.  I am an advocate of the Campaign for Plain English and, if I ever wanted to show how NOT to write clearly and concisely, I would uphold HERO as a shining example.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the rules are overly complicated, such that, in play, the GM will perforce be endlessly referring back to the tables in the book.  Of course, to validate this criticism would require actually playing it.  Which I simply cannot be bothered to try and do..




This actually seems to not resemble Hero System at all.  A beginning GM will almost certainly need to refer to the Speed Chart (and might still want to for a long time if there's a lot of Speed variation between the PCs), but other than that I can't think of a table you need to look at during play.  There are a couple for character creation, but one is just basically a table style description of all the powers -- 4th edition had a table that made it so you wouldn't have to do any multiplying or dividing of fractions, but I don't even remember right now if that even made it in to 5th edition.

There are a couple of lists of combat modifiers that you might need to look up the first few times, but they're pretty straightforward.  It's not nearly as complicated as, say, figuring out AoO.

The character construction is fairly complex -- not as bad as trying to find just the right Feat from six or eight or however many books your DM allows, and lots of character types won't be complex at all (anything with lots of different fancy powers probably will -- fantasy wizards are pretty complicated for newbies.  Not hard, just a lot of different details.)

But Sidekick is so cheap that you might as well pick it up as others have suggested -- I mean, if you don't like it, what are you out?  One night at the movies, maybe?  (I couldn't go to a movie by myself for the cost of the Sidekick book if I wanted a popcorn, but it'd be pretty close.)


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## PCD (Apr 16, 2004)

Wow!

Thanks for all of the information.

Tons of it.


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## buzz (Apr 16, 2004)

Chuk said:
			
		

> 4th edition had a table that made it so you wouldn't have to do any multiplying or dividing of fractions, but I don't even remember right now if that even made it in to 5th edition.



It's in _Sidekick_.


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## buzz (Apr 16, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> In a nutshell, Hero uses redundant stats (e.g., Body, Con, PD, ED, and Stun for "toughness") and falsely precise stat values (e.g. Int 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, they're all functionally the same).  It also tracks too many numbers in combat (Body, Stun, and End, as well as charges, the Spd chart, etc.) and relies on quirky, slow die mechanics.



Yep, I pretty much don't agree. Okey-doke.


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 16, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> In a nutshell, Hero uses redundant stats (e.g., Body, Con, PD, ED, and Stun for "toughness") and falsely precise stat values (e.g. Int 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, they're all functionally the same).  It also tracks too many numbers in combat (Body, Stun, and End, as well as charges, the Spd chart, etc.) and relies on quirky, slow die mechanics.




If you want to get the nuiances of combat then the CON, BOD, STUN, PD & ED values are very necesary - in some campaigns you need MD as well. If you don't want the nuiances, then GURPS or D&D is for you. I like that a Meatshield can take 10d6 HTH without blinking but but should he be fireballed for 10d6 he is stunned out of his gord and possibly hurt pretty badly. You can't do that without ED & PD. I like getting STUNNED and being basically unhurt or getting your hand cut off but still being awake. Those things require all of those numbers but they are not that difficult to track....like familiar abilities, hit points, ac (touch ac, flat footed ac, and AC), special abilities, spell-like abilities, abilities of weapons...blah, blah, blah, blah....same thing. All systems have things you have to keep track of....Hero is no different.) 

Stats are an issue just like in D&D -- an 11 INT is the same thing as a 10 INT. There are floaty numbers that are just there....but it is no different than other games.

In modern we don't track end and speed is not that difficult. In Fantasy - End is only required if you are a spell caster, cause let's face it the non-spell caster spend the same amount every round. Not to hard to add that up at any point to see whare you are at.

In supers - END is vital. Sometimes the only way to beat someone is to outlast them. I had a character who was based around his END usage....

Energy Blast -
12d6 = 0 END
+2d6 = 4 END
+2d6 =10 END
+2d6 = 20 END
+2d6 = 40 END 

This character who I played for 2 years could not be done without end. If you want flexibility that means that you need checks and balances. END, SPD, STUN, Charges, and REC are all balances. 

My wife looks at my d20 books and says that it must require a math degree to play the game with all of those numbers. It is a familar song but still not true. It just looks that way with those who are not familiar.

PS - Hero folks don't generally discuss Hero games at RPG.net - it is like showing up at a clan rally and being the wrong race. Why take the abuse?

Kannik - that is an excellent summation.


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## Karl Green (Apr 16, 2004)

Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> ---------------
> 
> Next, a little history. Hero system began as Champions, a superhero rpg. It was revolutionary in many ways, and did a great job creating the comic book genre. The rules, however, were in need of serious balancing. Other supplements came out, including for the wild west and espionage.
> 
> ...




Not to be a dork but you are mixing up Champions III, Hero IV and Fuzion a bit. There was no HERO 3, it was still split up back them. I still have the Champions III rule book at home.  Hero 4 is when the made just one book as it were for all genes. Champions 4 (or the big blue book as was called) came out first then the HERO system or something. A few years later they had Fuzion, which could be thought of a 4.5. It was Champions/Hero 4 that all the rules were more or less put together...

NOW back on topic... I use to LOVE the Hero system and played it all the time, but after I while I got tired of the weight of the system. You have to track END, STUN, BODY, etc. for each and every NPC, with PD/ED, counting damage dice (normal and killing use two different systems), etc. It just got to be to much, and I started enjoying the game less and less. I occational play in a game of it but I would never run a game using the system any more. I have thought about cutting back on the number of Attributes and Figured attributes, cutting out lots of other stuff also but what is the point? It is a good game for some people, just not me


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## mmadsen (Apr 16, 2004)

Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> I like that a Meatshield can take 10d6 HTH without blinking but but should he be fireballed for 10d6 he is stunned out of his gord and possibly hurt pretty badly. You can't do that without ED & PD.



I like the idea of Electro being immune to electricity but not to plasma bolts.  Do we need Electricity Defense and Plasma Defense on every character sheet?  Cold Defense and Sonic Defense?  Fire Defense and Acid Defense?

A flexible system can handle plenty of nuances without inflexibly requiring stats for all of them.


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## Jhamin (Apr 16, 2004)

PCD said:
			
		

> Wow!
> 
> Thanks for all of the information.
> 
> Tons of it.




Yeah....

Hero is one of those games that inspires passion, one way or another.

People who hate it see it as a pile of stats that can choke a horse masqurading as a streamlined system.

People who love it (such as myself) see it as a game based on consistant rules that are flexible enough to create the game I want without resorting to "just making it up" the way rules lite systems do or being forced into a class/level straightjacket.


Hero is a game that people hate enough to go on long rants about when the suject is mentioned, yet when it went out of print for 10 years it's devoted fanbase still played voraciously and kept an active internet presence.  How many other games can say that?  (Ok, maybe RuneQuest)


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## Jhamin (Apr 16, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> I like the idea of Electro being immune to electricity but not to plasma bolts.  Do we need Electricity Defense and Plasma Defense on every character sheet?  Cold Defense and Sonic Defense?  Fire Defense and Acid Defense?
> 
> A flexible system can handle plenty of nuances without inflexibly requiring stats for all of them.





Hmm.  I'm pretty much with Buzz on this one.  I don't agree.  Sorry.   


I want to compare the fact that Hero actually puts PD, ED, Stun and Body on your character sheet while D20 uses pretty much all the same stats but calls them Fire Resistance, Electricity Resistance, Acid Resistance, Cold Resistance, Sonic Resistance, Damage Reduction, Standard Damage, and Non-Lethal Damage.

But that's just my Hero Defensiveness.  We love our game.


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## d4 (Apr 17, 2004)

Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> In supers - END is vital. Sometimes the only way to beat someone is to outlast them. I had a character who was based around his END usage...



see, that was always the weird thing for me with HERO. i can't think of very many (well, _any_ right now off the top of my head) superheroes or supervillains from comics who get tired out from using their powers.

i've never seen Cyclops say, "Darn, i can't fire any more optic blasts. i'm worn out." i've never seen Superman get tired from flying around too much.

Endurance as its used in HERO/Champions just doesn't model the genre IMO.

how many fights in comic books end not because the hero KOs the bad guy, but because the bad guy _gets tired first?_ yet, as you said, that happens much more frequently in Champions.

for the few characters who do use such a construction (as the one you created), it could easily be a limitation applied to that particular character's powers. there's no reason to have to track Endurance for _every_ character just because a small handful of characters use it as a defining trait.



			
				Jhamin said:
			
		

> I want to compare the fact that Hero actually puts PD, ED, Stun and Body on your character sheet while D20 uses pretty much all the same stats but calls them Fire Resistance, Electricity Resistance, Acid Resistance, Cold Resistance, Sonic Resistance, Damage Reduction, Standard Damage, and Non-Lethal Damage.



same argument here. i prefer the way d20 does it. if it isn't central to your character concept, why have it on your character sheet?

since not many characters have, for example, Acid Resistance, it makes more sense to have that be a special ability that is only listed if you have it, instead of having it be on every character's sheet.

i agree with mmadsen about PD and ED. it's simpler to have a generic "Toughness" stat, and then modify that with advantages or limitations if you want to have your physical toughness different than your energy toughness. no need to make everyone define them separately just because a few characters need the detail.


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## Victim (Apr 17, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> I like the idea of Electro being immune to electricity but not to plasma bolts.  Do we need Electricity Defense and Plasma Defense on every character sheet?  Cold Defense and Sonic Defense?  Fire Defense and Acid Defense?
> 
> A flexible system can handle plenty of nuances without inflexibly requiring stats for all of them.




Put a flaw on your ED.


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## mmadsen (Apr 17, 2004)

Jhamin said:
			
		

> Hero is one of those games that inspires passion, one way or another.



True -- but not everyone must either hate or love Hero as a whole.  Some of us recognize both the genius of Hero and the flaws of Hero.


			
				Jhamin said:
			
		

> People who hate it see it as a pile of stats that can choke a horse masqurading as a streamlined system.
> 
> People who love it (such as myself) see it as a game based on consistant rules that are flexible enough to create the game I want without resorting to "just making it up" the way rules lite systems do or being forced into a class/level straightjacket.



And wouldn't it be great if we could have a consistent, flexible system without the pile of stats that can choke a horse?


			
				Jhamin said:
			
		

> Hero is a game that people hate enough to go on long rants about when the suject is mentioned, yet when it went out of print for 10 years it's devoted fanbase still played voraciously and kept an active internet presence.  How many other games can say that?  (Ok, maybe RuneQuest)



The goal -- or at least _my_ goal -- is not to curse Hero or to praise it, but to recognize what works well and what could be streamlined.


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## mmadsen (Apr 17, 2004)

Victim said:
			
		

> Put a flaw on your ED.



Or put a limitation on your Toughness.


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## PCD (Apr 17, 2004)

Lots of info, thanks folks.

I think I am going to buy HERO 5th Ed and join the ranks of the thoughtful!


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## buzz (Apr 17, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> And wouldn't it be great if we could have a consistent, flexible system without the pile of stats that can choke a horse?



That's just it. I don't think that there's any consensus that HERO chokes horses. HERO ain't perfect, but stating things like this as fact is a bit presumptuous.


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## buzz (Apr 17, 2004)

Karl Green said:
			
		

> You have to track END, STUN, BODY, etc. for each and every NPC...



Each and every? Not really. You can wing HERO like anything else.


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## mmadsen (Apr 17, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> That's just it. I don't think that there's any consensus that HERO chokes horses. HERO ain't perfect, but stating things like this as fact is a bit presumptuous.



I was directly quoting Jhamin's tongue-in-cheek characterization of the _con_ side's argument.


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## Shard O'Glase (Apr 17, 2004)

I am on the hero system is great side of the argument.  Now I freely admit I have a few house rules to streamline the game since I got its too slow in combat complaints from new players.  But these things be easy to do, and the system always seemed very intuitive and elegent to me.  

Now then for supers games I think it falls down a bit sometimes for some people.  Overall it totally rocks but when emulating specific characters frequently the brand name super RPGs do better because there is a green lantern power in the DC rpg its called force manipulaiton.  

Hero being an effect based game sometimes you have to shoe horn in some powers to get what you want.  Sure it still works but being a show horned in effect it wont have the same feel to many except for true hero nuts like me.  Someone mentioned superspeedsters like the flash, me I'd happy with megascaled movement, flight only almong surfaces to simulate running along water, an area effect attack to simulate running aorund beating everyone down in the blink of an eye, and tranforms for simulate rapid building/dismantaling.  For me it works beautifully and I visualuize the powers just like the flash powers in the comics, for others it doesn't seem like a unified superspeed ability but some separate add on powers.


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## Driddle (Apr 17, 2004)

I don't feel like dressing this up in a bunch of pseudo-intellectual mumbo-jumbo logic constructs, pros vs. cons, that would drag out for days. 
To the point:

I like Hero and Champion A LOT, and I always have. It's way cool.
So every time I read a message here putting down MY game system, my self-defensive emotions get tweaked.
Anyone who can't appreciate the Hero System is a poo-poo head. So there.


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## PCD (Apr 17, 2004)

Dang.  I hope I like it then....wouldn't want to be a Poo-Poo head...

laffs


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## Dogbrain (Apr 17, 2004)

Victim said:
			
		

> Put a flaw on your ED.




That's still not immunity.


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## Darkness (Apr 17, 2004)

Dogbrain said:
			
		

> That's still not immunity.



Depends on how much of it you buy.


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 17, 2004)

d4 said:
			
		

> see, that was always the weird thing for me with HERO. i can't think of very many (well, _any_ right now off the top of my head) superheroes or supervillains from comics who get tired out from using their powers.
> 
> i've never seen Cyclops say, "Darn, i can't fire any more optic blasts. i'm worn out." i've never seen Superman get tired from flying around too much.
> 
> ...




Actually this is a concept based off of one of the Xmen - Sunfire. It also applies to Nightcrawler, Cannonball, and Sunspot. That is off the top of my head in just the Xmen.  Cyclops & Havok have a neverending energy blast - it never tires them out. Ever. So, bought to 0 END.


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 17, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> I like the idea of Electro being immune to electricity but not to plasma bolts.  Do we need Electricity Defense and Plasma Defense on every character sheet?  Cold Defense and Sonic Defense?  Fire Defense and Acid Defense?
> 
> A flexible system can handle plenty of nuances without inflexibly requiring stats for all of them.




Without getting silly - we are talking about broad concepts of damage. Energy - Physical - Mental. I am sure that even you can agree that those are broad concepts and what you are referring to are specific concepts? To clarify - Fire can only injure in 4 ways. Given that I think you will grant that Energy is a General Concept and that Fire is a Specific - your example falls flat. 

d20 also uses STUN and BODY in Star Wars and in the UA. It also has a seperate STUNNING level and yet another level to track for instant death. Why do you insist on making Hero seem so difficult? It is of approximate difficulty to d20 - you can claim otherwise but you can also claim the sun will rise in the west....that don't make it so. You seem to purposefully distort the system to make your points, what value does that have?

Hero aint perfect but it ain't what you paint it either and anyone who starts a thread on RPG.net to talk about Hero is already suspect or brand new to RPG.net.


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 17, 2004)

Shard O'Glase said:
			
		

> I am on the hero system is great side of the argument.  Now I freely admit I have a few house rules to streamline the game since I got its too slow in combat complaints from new players.




Just to make a small note - d20 and Hero both have more house rules than players   Most everybody in both systems tweeks the game to suit their taste.


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## d4 (Apr 17, 2004)

Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Actually this is a concept based off of one of the Xmen - Sunfire. It also applies to Nightcrawler, Cannonball, and Sunspot. That is off the top of my head in just the Xmen.  Cyclops & Havok have a neverending energy blast - it never tires them out. Ever. So, bought to 0 END.



of course. i never said there weren't any characters who didn't tire -- i think i said i couldn't think of any off the top of my head.

however, i'm sure if we sat down and started making lists, the list of comic book characters who _have_ "bought their powers down to 0 END" (to use the HERO-ism) would be far longer than those who do use END.

that's why i think the system would be better if it assumed 0 END by default and had "Tires Character" as a limitation. in fact, this is exactly what Mutants & Masterminds does.


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## d4 (Apr 17, 2004)

Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Without getting silly - we are talking about broad concepts of damage. Energy - Physical - Mental. I am sure that even you can agree that those are broad concepts and what you are referring to are specific concepts? To clarify - Fire can only injure in 4 ways. Given that I think you will grant that Energy is a General Concept and that Fire is a Specific - your example falls flat.



actually, mmadsen was arguing the exact opposite -- why not just have _one_ type of damage instead of three, and just one stat to resist it ("Toughness"). if you want to be more resistant to physical damage than energy damage, put an advantage or limitation on your "Toughness" stat.

again, there's no need for complexity to affect every character in the game if it's only going to be used by a small fraction of them.


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## d4 (Apr 17, 2004)

Dogbrain said:
			
		

> That's still not immunity.



from what i remember reading, it's actually "by design" in HERO that there are no absolute immunities.


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## Acid_crash (Apr 17, 2004)

I like both games, but I like HERO more.  It's more detailed, and provides me more options.  However, I play d20 more because I can find more people to play it, and when people see that big black book (BBb   ) on the shelf, they grimace and turn away from it...

For sheer flexibility, HERO dominates.  For simplicity, D&D dominates.  However, for cumbersome systems with bunches of rules, house rules, skills charts, traits/feats...both are tied in complexity...


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## mmadsen (Apr 17, 2004)

PCD said:
			
		

> Recently, I asked about TriStat and a few folks were nice enough to answer my questions.



I missed that thread, but I did write a review of SAS for RPGnet (that began as a series of posts here).


----------



## Hatchling Dragon (Apr 17, 2004)

Quick tip for anyone playing HERO, pardon me if I'm repeating an earlier post, get a Whiteboard and some dry-erase markers.  Also good would be the margins of your Battlemat, or even a spare mat that you aren't actively using.  I've found that it's a *huge* help, especialy to new players, if you have a copy of the Speed Chart showing the Segments that everyone acts on (ie: thier Phases).

If you're like my group, and your character sheets are pretty-much public domain, then just list END and STUN (or more) on the Board to help people keep track of just what sorta shape thier character's in.  Right at first we even listed all 'Mobs' on the board too, just to let everyone get more of a feel for how the system works.  We still list enemy Phases on the chart, it's just too convient for the GM and PC's to keep track of who's going before whom.

I suppose this means we've been following that already mentioned idea of the "Throw Away Starter Game", one of the best tips I've heard for a new HERO group.  And I'm not saying this just because it was *my* idea for our group to try it 

Hatchling Dragon


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## Sir Whiskers (Apr 17, 2004)

Hatchling Dragon said:
			
		

> Quick tip for anyone playing HERO, pardon me if I'm repeating an earlier post, get a Whiteboard and some dry-erase markers..._snip_...If you're like my group, and your character sheets are pretty-much public domain, then just list END and STUN (or more) on the Board to help people keep track of just what sorta shape their character's in.




I really like this idea - consider it yoinked. I've seen too many players who just can't keep track of these things on their own, so having one player do this during a session should work nicely. And that frees me up to keep track of the villains.


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## buzz (Apr 18, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> I was directly quoting Jhamin's tongue-in-cheek characterization of the _con_ side's argument.



Right. But...



			
				mmadsen said:
			
		

> And wouldn't it be great if we could have a consistent, flexible system without the pile of stats that can choke a horse?



The implication of this and other posts of yours have been that HERO does "choke horses" and have "redundant" stats and so forth. While this is a common "con" argument against HERO, I don't think that there's any consensus that it's *true*. Your thread on streamlining HERO assumes that HERO needs to be streamlined. There's a big group of HERO players out there who'd say it doesn't.

See, I told you I wouldn't agree.


----------



## Sketchpad (Apr 18, 2004)

PCD said:
			
		

> Lots of info, thanks folks.
> 
> I think I am going to buy HERO 5th Ed and join the ranks of the thoughtful!



I don't think you'll be disappointed PCD   Feel free to drop by the Hero boards as well (www.herogames.com/forums) and say howdy ... IMHO, it's one of the best fan-bases you'll find with TONS of conversions and info for anyone playing the system   Just tell 'em Sketch sent ya


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## mmadsen (Apr 18, 2004)

PCD said:
			
		

> Recently, I asked about TriStat and a few folks were nice enough to answer my questions.  So, now I am asking about the HERO System.



If you'd like to compare supers games, check out Tri-Stat vs. Hero vs. M&M over on RPGnet.

Also, check out this PDF of the *Incredible Hulk* statted out in multiple game systems.  It should give you a great feel for the various games.


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## PCD (Apr 19, 2004)

Thanks for that PDF.  I like how M&M works, but both HERO and TriStat still attract my attention.  Hmmm...


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## Greatwyrm (Apr 19, 2004)

Well, here's my 2cp.

First, there's a significant difference in the quality of HERO 4e and HERO 5e.  I had 4e.  I sold it on ebay, hoping someone could at least make a nice coaster out of it.  I flipped through 5e at the FLGS and couldn't believe it was the same game.  I am very happy with the purchase of 5e and hope to run a game of some sort if I ever get time.

Second, I've played a lot of GURPS and even though I haven't played HERO, I like the design of the rules better.  In GURPS, you have the standard rules and then bolt-on rules for everything else (computers, magic, psionics, vehicles).  In HERO, everything runs of the same core rules.  A magic wand, a pistol, and a bow that all do the same damage all cost the same points.

Third, there is a big learning curve, but some of it is imagined.  I've seen plenty of game systems for just about everything under the sun.  I even managed to understand char gen in the newest edition of Mechwarrior.  I had to read through the basics of the rules a few times before I got it.  Once everything clicks though, it's pretty darn easy.

Next, don't get hung up on it being a "supers" game.  With the right ground rules and point limits, HERO can handle just about anything you want to run.  There's official and fan-created material for supers, low fantasy, high fantasy, swords and sorcery, cyberpunk, space opera, hard sci-fi, pulp adventure, and just about anything else you can think of.

Finally, as someone said on the HERO boards, "there are usually more ways to build a power in HERO than there are people who want to build it."  That's an exaggeration, but not by much.


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## Felon (Apr 19, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> Also, check out this PDF of the *Incredible Hulk* statted out in multiple game systems.  It should give you a great feel for the various games.




Heh. So the Hulk has an Entangle attack? Lol, I forgot that aspect of playing Champions: buying Powers to represent any super-tactic not expressly outlined in the combat rules.




			
				Greatwyrm said:
			
		

> First, there's a significant difference in the quality of HERO 4e and HERO 5e.  I had 4e.  I sold it on ebay, hoping someone could at least make a nice coaster out of it.  I flipped through 5e at the FLGS and couldn't believe it was the same game.  I am very happy with the purchase of 5e and hope to run a game of some sort if I ever get time.




This is a line I just don't get. I've got both editions. Not much difference. There are the little nickel-and-dime plug-ins to buy for powers, and some sidebars making recommendations for the GM, but the text is largely copy-and-paste from 4e. So what are the major improvements?


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## Greatwyrm (Apr 19, 2004)

Felon said:
			
		

> I've got both editions. Not much difference.  -- snip -- So what are the major improvements?




As I mentioned, I sold my 4e version.  Consequently, I can't give you a side-by-side comparison.  All I can tell you is that I never "got" 4e, but 5e has really grown on me.

Maybe it's better organization.  Maybe it's all the sample powers in the sidebars.  Maybe it's just cleaner overall writing to explain the very same rules.  I can't really put my finger on it, but I like HERO 5e.  Same for the supplements.  I've tracked down 4e versions of books they don't plan on updating for a while.  I think the newer stuff (for 5e) is much better in both the clarity of the rules and the overall quality of the books.


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## Agback (Apr 19, 2004)

Felon said:
			
		

> Heh. So the Hulk has an Entangle attack? Lol, I forgot that aspect of playing Champions: buying Powers to represent any super-tactic not expressly outlined in the combat rules.




It is a 'feature' that contributed greatly to my first impression of _Champions_. A GM at the UNSW RPG Association ran a demo game for which he handed out pre-generated characters. Unfortunately he was one of those GMs who won't let you spit in your captor's eye unless you have paid for a a flash attack and had generated the characters pretty unimaginatively. I drew a martial-artist character called 'Webs' who was based on Spider-Man, and ended up through a failure to communicate fighting against a brick with growth whom the GM had intended as an opponnent for the PC brick. I tried to do several things with my characters webs that made perfect sense in world terms, but which the GM disallowed without any in-world explanation for their failure, on the grounds taht the character did not have a ranged grab, did not have telekinesis, did not have forcewall, etc. The final straw was when he would not permit me to squirt web into an eye the size of a basketball because my character did not have a flash attack. And this, I thought, was both his fault rather than mine and a pretty poor way to go about advertising the advantages of his favourite system.

You can get around this problem, but it involves thinking during character generation of everything you might want to do with your character's powers. And unfortunately it often means that characters with some quite nifty concepts are very expensive, and character designs often opaque.

Regards,


Agback


----------



## Geoff Watson (Apr 19, 2004)

Agback said:
			
		

> It is a 'feature' that contributed greatly to my first impression of _Champions_. A GM at the UNSW RPG Association ran a demo game for which he handed out pre-generated characters. Unfortunately he was one of those GMs who won't let you spit in your captor's eye unless you have paid for a a flash attack and had generated the characters pretty unimaginatively. I drew a martial-artist character called 'Webs' who was based on Spider-Man, and ended up through a failure to communicate fighting against a brick with growth whom the GM had intended as an opponnent for the PC brick. I tried to do several things with my characters webs that made perfect sense in world terms, but which the GM disallowed without any in-world explanation for their failure, on the grounds taht the character did not have a ranged grab, did not have telekinesis, did not have forcewall, etc. The final straw was when he would not permit me to squirt web into an eye the size of a basketball because my character did not have a flash attack. And this, I thought, was both his fault rather than mine and a pretty poor way to go about advertising the advantages of his favourite system.
> 
> You can get around this problem, but it involves thinking during character generation of everything you might want to do with your character's powers. And unfortunately it often means that characters with some quite nifty concepts are very expensive, and character designs often opaque.
> 
> ...




So you should get all those powers for free?
Too many people try to get 'something for nothing'.

Geoff.


----------



## Agback (Apr 19, 2004)

Geoff Watson said:
			
		

> So you should get all those powers for free?




Did I say that? No, I said "You can get around this problem, but it involves thinking during character generation of everything you might want to do with your character's powers."

This makes character design difficult and slow, and it also means that one is prone to make oversights (unless one uses variable power pools: I have friends who claim that every character ought to have a VPP). It also means taht players who accept that their characters will be constrained by nonsensical limitations (such as being able to squirt web to swing on, or to entangle and enemy, but not to catch someone who is falling) often end up with characters taht can kick more butt.



> Too many people try to get 'something for nothing'.




Indeed. Also, too many _Hero System_ advocates just don't care that what is going on in the game world of a _Hero System_ game doesn't make sense on its own terms. But for some people, including some people who ask for advaice about whether they might like _Hero System_, this is an important point.

If you are happy with a character who can squirt webs to swing on or to entangle enemies, but who cannot squirt web to catch an innocent bystander who is falling off a building, and who cannot squirt web into an enemy's face, that's fine. Or if you are happy with every character having a list of powers as long as you arm detailing the possible uses of their (for example) webs that is fine too.

However, if you think the fact that the _Hero System_ works this way ought to be concealed from the public in discussions such as this one, I am afraid that you are out of luck. That's not fine by me.

Regards,


Agback


----------



## Jhamin (Apr 19, 2004)

Agback said:
			
		

> I tried to do several things with my characters webs that made perfect sense in world terms, but which the GM disallowed without any in-world explanation for their failure, on the grounds taht the character did not have a ranged grab, did not have telekinesis, did not have forcewall, etc. The final straw was when he would not permit me to squirt web into an eye the size of a basketball because my character did not have a flash attack. And this, I thought, was both his fault rather than mine and a pretty poor way to go about advertising the advantages of his favourite system.
> Agback




This sounds like a very poor GM all around.  My apologies on behalf of Herodom.

- If he didn't want you to do all the stuff Spider Man does, he shouldn't have given you an agile guy named "Webs".  When he did, you started comparing what Spiderman can do with what Webs can do when you evaluated the game.

- If he did intend that you play a Spider Man Analogue, then this sounds like he gave you a really awful version of the character to play.  He should have bought you the ability to perform all the Web Tricks Spidey uses every issue.

- It also sounds like he didn't even know the rules very well.  If he disallowed something because you "Didn't have Forcewall", then although I am just making an educated guess it sounds like your GM hadn't fully read the Entangle power.



All in all, your point about buying different powers to simulate various effects is well taken.  It does tend to complicate some writeups & increase the expense of some characters.
It is also something that most Hero gamers see as a strength rather than a weakness.  To use Spiderman as an example, lots of characters have the ability to swing from a line (Daredevil, Batman & co., Moonknight, Tarzan, the Musketeers, etc) but Spiderman's webs go way beyond that.  He can do a whole host of things besides swing on them.  Some systems give swinglines all that stuff to begin with, then give you a break if you can't do them all.  Hero chooses to break every power down to a very basic level and let you add things as you go.
This is an approach that frustrates many, but is seen by most Hero fans as a level of control over character creation lacking in most other RPGs.




BTW:
5th edition also includes a skill that allows you to use your powers in ways that make sense but only come up once in a blue moon by just rolling the dice.  You don't have to buy every possible permutation if you only expect to do one or two things on a regular basis.
I suspect the Hulk bought a superstrength Entangle because he seems to do that every other issue & having the power is more reliable than making rolls.


----------



## MulhorandSage (Apr 19, 2004)

Agback said:
			
		

> However, if you think the fact that the _Hero System_ works this way ought to be concealed from the public in discussions such as this one, I am afraid that you are out of luck. That's not fine by me.




Fifth Edition added a Power skill which allows for greater flexibility in using one's powers to perform stunts that aren't on the sheet for many of the purposes you've described. It's worked quite well in my game.

Scott Bennie


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 19, 2004)

I also don't see any real difference between 4E and 5E ----- but I have heard the comments of "dang, this is sooooo much better" enough times that I have to wonder that it might just be that some of us played it so much during 4E that we did not notice the improved user friendliness?


----------



## Felon (Apr 19, 2004)

Jhamin said:
			
		

> I suspect the Hulk bought a superstrength Entangle because he seems to do that every other issue & having the power is more reliable than making rolls.




Rolls? What rolls? If there's a lamppost around after Hulk knocks a bad guy out, he yanks it out of the ground and twists it around him a couple of times. Either rolling for that or paying points for it is a tad silly. That's like having to buy an Area Affect Physical Blast OIF before your brick can hurl it at someone....with the exception that I mentioned, that throwing a car is a tactic outlined in the manual, whereas bending a lamppost isn't an official use for super-strength, so it's just *gotta* be a power. That was one element of Hero I never did warm up to.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> I also don't see any real difference between 4E and 5E ----- but I have heard the comments of "dang, this is sooooo much better" enough times that I have to wonder that it might just be that some of us played it so much during 4E that we did not notice the improved user friendliness?




The only real change I can put my finger on is better formatting in power descriptions. Like in the Hulk example, each power starts with the actual name of the power in bold. In the old days, the description would start with a bunch of abbreviated jargon ("15d6 EB AE 5"r AVLD AP NRP Act. 14< 8 ch.") and maybe somewhere along the way you'd get the name of the power in quotes or parantheses somewhere. Or there'd be nothing, and you'd have to read the character's flavor text and start drawing your own connections.


----------



## buzz (Apr 19, 2004)

Felon said:
			
		

> That's like having to buy an Area Affect Physical Blast OIF before your brick can hurl it at someone....with the exception that I mentioned, that throwing a car is a tactic outlined in the manual, whereas bending a lamppost isn't an official use for super-strength, so it's just *gotta* be a power. That was one element of Hero I never did warm up to.



The upcoming _Ultimate Brick_ will probably address stuff like this. I also think that the extent to which HERO requires a construct such as above for a brick is somewhat dependent on the GM.



			
				Felon said:
			
		

> The only real change I can put my finger on is better formatting in power descriptions.



There are more changes than just this in 5E. The biggest, IMO, is that the books tend to written much clearer and provide a lot more general assistance.


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## elbandit (Apr 19, 2004)

*Power Skill*



			
				Agback said:
			
		

> I tried to do several things with my characters webs that made perfect sense in world terms, but which the GM disallowed without any in-world explanation for their failure, on the grounds taht the character did not have a ranged grab, did not have telekinesis, did not have forcewall, etc. The final straw was when he would not permit me to squirt web into an eye the size of a basketball because my character did not have a flash attack. And this, I thought, was both his fault rather than mine and a pretty poor way to go about advertising the advantages of his favourite system.




Sounds more like the GM did not fully think out Webs creation or even utilize the Power Skill rules which allows you to do such tricks, though on a low level.


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## mudpyr8 (Apr 19, 2004)

I think plenty of people have weighed in and shared their thoughtful opinions. I have a few points to add.

1. Hero is the Gamers' Toolkit. Says so on the book. There is a whole section devoted to the discussion of altering the rules to fit the genre. I think many people overlook that. Hero's flexibility allows you to do anything. Unfortunately, Hero's flexibility requires you to do everything.

Is this good or bad? Depends on your point of view. Many Hero players enjoy building their characters and playing the game. Other players just want to sit down and pick abilities from a list. For the latter, there are many wonderful books (UNTIL SuperPowers Database, Hero Bestiary, Vehicle Sourcebook, Minions, Monsters, and Marauders, Grimoire, and so on). However, those books still present one person's view on how such lists should be created and as such may no jive with an individual player's preconceived notion about what is cool.

None-the-less, Hero still allows you to use that list as a framework and to change any of those items to better fit your campaign. This is a good thing, but impossible without a core set of rules and guidelines about effect creation. In d20 terms, how do you design a balanced 7th level spell? You don't, you make it up based on your subjective judgement about whether or not that is the correct power level. Is this to say Hero is perfectly balanced? Absolutely not. The ability to teleport would destroy most feudal societies, especially if it is easy to do, so the GM has to decide whether or not that is appropriate.

Just because you can make an effect doesn't mean you should.

2. Presentation. I agree that many Hero resources are presented in a "crunchy" manner. This doesn't mean there isn't good source material there, and many of the campaign sourcebooks are excellent.

I will share one thing that I and my company are doing to address some of this. This year we will be publishing a licensed Fantasy Hero setting. The goal is to create a fantasy campaign and present it in the format that is acceptable to the players that want to focus on the story surrounding an ability or trait, and less on how it was built. Will the crunchy bits still be there? Absolutley, but in a fashion so as not to distract the reader. We believe this will do a lot to provide a different model for how Hero is presented and played, regardless of whether the specifics of the setting engage you.

Hero is heroic, which makes it ideal for fantasy game. Dealing with hordes of bad guys without getting turned into guacomole is something Hero does very well. And it does it while still allowing a degree of control concerning combat that most systems do not allow. 

GURPS is an excellent fit as well, and perhaps 4e will address some of the cinematic limiations of that system. Until then, I think only d20 accomodates that cinematic combat, unfortunately at the expense of player control of the combat. Don't get me wrong, I like d20 a lot, but I enjoy my Hero combats so much more than I ever did my d20 ones. 

Please take a look at www.narosia.com and see what we're doing. We'll be at Origins and GenCon, running 2 sessions at each, so if you have the opportunity stop on by.

I will also second a comment made by a previous poster. The online hero community at herogames.com is one of the warmest and friendliest I have seen on line. Everyone is willing to offer a constructive opinion about how things run in Hero. The master of the game as it were, Steve Long, even has his own forum where you can post questions directly to him. I have never seen a question go unanswered for longer than a day, and most of mine were answered in under 4 hours. Better support from a game company is hard to find.

Thank you.


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## swrushing (Apr 19, 2004)

mudpyr8 said:
			
		

> In d20 terms, how do you design a balanced 7th level spell? You don't, you make it up based on your subjective judgement about whether or not that is the correct power level.




Whereas in HERo i take a subjectively arrived at base cost for a power, choose subjectively between any number of different constructs (remember, there are always multiple ways to build the same thing in hero?), apply subjectively priced advantages and disadvantages and finally arrive at a final cost which may or may not be a valid measure of "power" or "balance" (no experienced HERO player will tell you that either final cost or active cost or any single "price" in HERO **will** work as an accurate measure for balance and will usually list about half a dozen things to compare) and that an experienced Gm will then compare to other effects at the same costs.

In d20, i take my experience and judgement and knowledge of my campaign world and i create what i think will be a seventh level spell. Then i compare it to other such spells and those of higher and lower level and (again with my experience, judgement, knowledge of the campaign and common sense in hand) decide if it is about right or needs tweaking.

I do the same thing in hero, but with a lot more math in between the initial "judgement stage", the midway "judgement stage" and the final "judgement stage".

It takes longer than it does in d20, requires more math than it does in d20, and the final result is just as accurate or inaccurate... which is to say, its as good or bad as my judgement was at all those judgement stages along the way.


----------



## Rackhir (Apr 19, 2004)

Agback said:
			
		

> Did I say that? No, I said "You can get around this problem, but it involves thinking during character generation of everything you might want to do with your character's powers."
> 
> This makes character design difficult and slow, and it also means that one is prone to make oversights (unless one uses variable power pools: I have friends who claim that every character ought to have a VPP). It also means taht players who accept that their characters will be constrained by nonsensical limitations (such as being able to squirt web to swing on, or to entangle and enemy, but not to catch someone who is falling) often end up with characters taht can kick more butt.




First off I'd have to agree that you definitely suffered from a bad DM. Lets face it an inflexible DM who demands that you run YOUR character however THEY think it should be run will ruin any game. Not to mention that it sounds like he did a piss poor job of designing the character to follow the concept you had. So it's not exactly fair to blame all of that on the system.

Second, it sounds like you feel that only absolute and total flexibility in what your powers can do is acceptable. In that kind of a situation then yes a Variable power pool is the way to go. Most superhero concepts don't require this though. Cyclops can't use his beam attack to create a force wall and there is no inherent reason why your webs for example have to be able to be made into a "Wall/Force Wall" or used in any of the ways you describe. There are dozens of reasons why your powers might not be able to be used that way. Spiders for example spin different web strands to catch flies and to walk on in their webs. Maybe you only had one kind.

One of the beauties of champions is that there are multiple ways to achieve flexibilty in powers. In champions there are no less than 4 ways that I can think of off hand.

* VPP - the most expensive, but the most flexible. Unfettered you can litterally do anything you want (within points limits). It can also be limited to simulate certain kinds of powers. A Power Duplicator character would add the limitation - Only to duplicate powers of target.

* Multipower - A big pool of points that can be divided up among many power slots. Say for example a 60 pool with 4 slots (Energy Blast, Forcefield, flight, TK) at (iirc) 1/10 the cost of the power pool (6*4). The points generally can be divded among the slots how ever wished, so long as it doesn't exceed 60 points. You could have everything in one slot or equally divided among them, etc...

*Elemental Commands - A set of Powers linked by a common theme. Say fire powers. The largest power gives a discount to the other powers, but all the powers have to have the same limitations. 

* Limited Use Powers - By taking a highly limited number of uses (1/day, for example), you can make affordable powers that might otherwise be to expensive for how much usage they would get.



			
				Agback said:
			
		

> Indeed. Also, too many _Hero System_ advocates just don't care that what is going on in the game world of a _Hero System_ game doesn't make sense on its own terms. But for some people, including some people who ask for advaice about whether they might like _Hero System_, this is an important point.
> 
> If you are happy with a character who can squirt webs to swing on or to entangle enemies, but who cannot squirt web to catch an innocent bystander who is falling off a building, and who cannot squirt web into an enemy's face, that's fine. Or if you are happy with every character having a list of powers as long as you arm detailing the possible uses of their (for example) webs that is fine too.
> 
> Agback




Your point about having to think of everything at the character creation is inaccurate. First as pointed out above, you can cover most if not all of the "Power Abilities" that an ability to "Shoot Webs" might imply. Yes this can involve some thought, but if absolute flexibility is required then you simply use a VPP. 

Second, remember superheroes frequently don't spring full blown from the head of Zeus. Spiderman couldn't do everything you wanted the character to do right off the bat. He learned new ways and uses for his webs as time passed, improved the formula and created variations for specific circumstances. IE. he gained experience or in champions more power points and bought new powers/improvements on old ones.

Champions does require more thought be put into a character than many systems do, because the system is more of a tool kit and less a collection of one size fits all Straightjackets (ie.classes). You do have to build your character to fill you're idea of what that character should be and that is more work than simply being told "You are a fighter you can do this." However, that does mean that you can have a character who fits virtually any character conception.


----------



## buzz (Apr 19, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> Whereas in HERo i take a subjectively arrived at base cost for a power, choose subjectively between any number of different constructs (remember, there are always multiple ways to build the same thing in hero?), apply subjectively priced advantages and disadvantages and finally arrive at a final cost which may or may not be a valid measure of "power" or "balance"...



Well, there's a difference between "subjective" and "arbitrary." The point system in HERO has been slowly polished over 20+ years, so there is *some* accuracy (as it were) to point costs. Thus, all the math does count for something. In general, the point cost will reflect the power of the ability.

Will context (i.e., the campaign setting) add a subjective element to this? Sure, but the same would be true with D&D. E.g., if magical healing didn't exist, you'd probably want to up the levels of available combat spells. I mean, just look at how _Midnight_ or certain _d20 Modern_ settings need to adapt.

With D&D, all you really have to go on is example. You look at spells or magic item costs and simply compare what you've created; the more or less experienced you are with the system, the more or less your chances of creating something unbalanced. (And, man, have I seen players creating some ridiculosly unbalanced stuff.)

With HERO, though, at least there's a baseline, and the math does most of the work for you. I.e., you don't need an experienced eye to determine what the point value of a power is. You just do the arithmetic.

Not that there isn't a subjective element; in any game, balance is always in the hands of the GM. I still think that HERO's "toolkit" provides a lot more guidance, though.


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## Driddle (Apr 19, 2004)

I'm a little confused now.

So. ... Which system is best for superhero RPG?   

(And hasn't there been a d20 adaptation of the Hero System?)


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## swrushing (Apr 19, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Well, there's a difference between "subjective" and "arbitrary."



Yes, subjective simply means by choice while arbitrary brings in the by whim or not by judgement or reason qualifiers.

I am saying both are subjective.

Are you saying one is arbitrary?

I find hero guys like to throw around "arbitrary" to mean "anything not done using our math" but before i figure you for one of thoise tell me whay you are wanting to tag with arbitrary?

If i, using my reason, experience, and judgement assign a custom spell a spell level in DnD is that what you want to call arbitrary?

Where do you want to use arbitrary in this discussion?

or was it just a snappy jab you really dont want to get called on to explain?



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> The point system in HERO has been slowly polished over 20+ years, so there is *some* accuracy (as it were) to point costs. Thus, all the math does count for something. In general, the point cost will reflect the power of the ability.



I see every bit as much, if not more, discontent and discussion over point costs on the hero boards now, after its decade long gap between 4e and 5e as i did before.

Can you say "damage shield" and with a straigh face tell me hero's math is better because its older?

BTW, unless i miss my guess, spell levels have been around longer than HERo math has, so if we apply the "older is more relaible" nons... errr... logic then DnD spell level assignments should be even more better at it than hero, right. They are older.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Will context (i.e., the campaign setting) add a subjective element to this? Sure, but the same would be true with D&D. E.g., if magical healing didn't exist, you'd probably want to up the levels of available combat spells. I mean, just look at how _Midnight_ or certain _d20 Modern_ settings need to adapt.



Eureka!!!

Yes.

both HERO and other game system have significant amounts of influence between "context/setting/genre and the VALUES/costs/levels that elements should be assigned. These influences must be assessed using judgement and reason and with direct assessment of the specific game in question.

A good example is water breathing vs +1 to hit (both 5 pts in hero.) Should they be the same cost for a water deep fantasy vs a dark sun desert fantasy? of course not. Should they be the same cost for a Phoenix AZ based superhero game as a NYC based superhero game where an atleantean sub mariner plot will be a main storyline? Of course not.




			
				buzz said:
			
		

> With D&D, all you really have to go on is example. You look at spells or magic item costs and simply compare what you've created; the more or less experienced you are with the system, the more or less your chances of creating something unbalanced. (And, man, have I seen players creating some ridiculosly unbalanced stuff.)



uh huh. and you have not seen people creating unbalanced stuff in HERo i bet?


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> With HERO, though, at least there's a baseline, and the math does most of the work for you. I.e., you don't need an experienced eye to determine what the point value of a power is. You just do the arithmetic.



In DND, i dont need an experienced eye to tell me what letter the spell starts with either.

Knowing the HERO point value of X does not mean it is easier to balance. It just means i have some number. Is that number useful?

Would you, as an experienced hero player, bet money that two characters both built on 300 rp were balanced without seeing them?

Would you, as an experienced hero player, bet money on two powers both built on 45 rp being balanced without seeing them?

or, in both cases, since you know from experience that rp cost is NOT sufficient as a metric to judge most anything about a power or a character, insist on seeing the powers or characters and comparing a number of factors like ap, construct guidelines, types of limitations, presence of GM permission items etc etc etc before placing your money down?

Honest now, which would it be?

For instance, lets look at it another way...

BRICK 1 (200 rp)
Str 60 Dex 20 Con 30 Body 20 Int 10 ego 10 pre 10 com 10
PD 12 ED 6 Rec 18 Spd 3 End 60 Stn 60  
Armor 10/10 
20 pts of non-combat skills
+1 OCV

Brick 2 (205 rp)
Str 60 Dex 20 Con 30 Body 20 Int 10 ego 10 pre 10 com 10
PD 12 ED 6 Rec 18 Spd 3 End 60 Stn 60  
Armor 10/10 
20 pts of non-combat skills
+1 OCV
Extra limb (prehensile tail with full strength and dex)

These two may happen to have turned out to be balanced. 5 pts out of 200 wont be making or breaking any balance and they are built almost identically.

but what about

Brick 3a (either 234 or 189 depending on GM judgement on figured characteristics as outlined in HERO5)
Str 60 Dex 20 Con 30 Body 20 Int 10 ego 10 pre 10 com 10
PD 12 ED 6 Rec 18 Spd 3 End 60 Stn 60  
Armor 10/10 
20 pts of non-combat skills
Extra limb (prehensile tail with normal human strength and dex 10)
+1 OCV

According to the numbers, which did in fact require at least one subjective GM decision, the latter guy should be either 10% more or 10% less effective than the other two. This could for instance boil down to a big to hit difference in a 3d6 system. For 34 pts, the most "by the book" costing, i could buy +3 overall levels and gain +3 with any roll i ever make, or double the armor.

But in fact, looking at it using judgement, the latter guy should be right around the same cost as the other two. matter of fact, he should sit between the 200 and 205 mark.

See, you are EXACTLY right, almost... you can get a number in HERO without making a subjective decision (if you want to pretedn the whole decision of initial costs, which method to build, etc were not subjective ones) or in this case, with only one...

but see, that number doesn't necessarily mean its right. You have a number. But is it a good number? is 234 a good number for the brick number 3?

Would i be better saying "well thats the points" and telling my guy its 234 as the book says or would I be better off saying "looking at the examples of brick 1 and brick 2, i think brick 3 should be in between... lets go with 202!"?

I think the latter.

But, yes indeed, after doing the hero math, you have a number... i will grant you that.



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Not that there isn't a subjective element; in any game, balance is always in the hands of the GM. I still think that HERO's "toolkit" provides a lot more guidance, though.




The math IMX does not provide guidance. it provides more work and what boils down to distraction. The focus becomes on the points and the points work or dont work dependingon the GM's totally subjective decisions, just like in the games where the GMs dont do the math.

besides, there is something inherently disengenuous of touting how much HERo helps inexperienced GMS. HERo is a complex toolkit build everything and enforce everything from scratch system which, frankly, i would not wish on an inexperienced GM who i personally had a grudge with. HERO is a toolkit system mostly favored by very experienced GMs who long ago overcame its steep learning curve.


----------



## drnuncheon (Apr 19, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> The implication of this and other posts of yours have been that HERO does "choke horses" and have "redundant" stats and so forth. While this is a common "con" argument against HERO, I don't think that there's any consensus that it's *true*.



 Well, I like HERO a lot, but he's got a point - there's a lot of granularity that, because of things like skills being based on 9+CHA/5, and CV being based on DEX/3, doesn't really _matter_.

 Some stats, each point matters.  CON is a good one - each point is one more point against being stunned, and 2 more points of endurance. Each second point gives you another 'hit point'.  Each 3 points of DEX is +1 to hit or AC (in d20 terms), each 5 is a +1 to Dex based skills, but each 1 point is still a +1 to initiative.

 But for stats like INT and PRE, you need to buy it in 5-point blocks to get any use out of it.

 To be fair, D20 has this too - you need a +2 to a stat to raise its value by +1.  They try to make the odd numbers useful too, by keying feat requirements to them, but that's not really much.

 J


----------



## buzz (Apr 19, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> Are you saying one is arbitrary?
> 
> I find hero guys like to throw around "arbitrary" to mean "anything not done using our math" but before i figure you for one of thoise tell me whay you are wanting to tag with arbitrary?



When I say "a difference between subjective and arbitrary," I'm not trying to assign either adjective to the systems being discussed. I'm trying to say something about how you're using the word "subjective." The tone of your post implied (to me) that by saying point costs in HERO are "subjective", you're saying that they're "arbitrary." I.e., that the designers just assigned point values willy-nilly, and the costs of individual powers have no relation to each other.

AFAIK, this isn't the case. And by mentioning how long the system has been around, I'm simply trying to point out that, even if there was a lot of arbitraryness when Champions was first designed in 1981 (since it basically created the point-buy concept), the various designers who have worked on the system in last 20+ years have tweaked and polished the system to try and fix any perceived "bugs". Ergo, in the settingless "baseline" of HERO, the point costs are generally in balance with each other. Work continues, of course...

Once you put a HERO construct in the context of a setting, of course, the point value becomes more subjective, as you have aptly pointed out.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> If i, using my reason, experience, and judgement assign a custom spell a spell level in DnD is that what you want to call arbitrary?
> 
> Where do you want to use arbitrary in this discussion?
> 
> or was it just a snappy jab you really dont want to get called on to explain?



First off, I would politely ask you to tone down the snarkiness.

Secondly, no, I am not saying that using your "reason, experience, and judgement" to assign a spell level in D&D is arbitrary. It is, as you stated originally, subjective. My point about the comparison to HERO is that, IME, it takes a lot of "reason, experience, and judgement" to design for D&D/d20. It takes not only a thorough knowledge of the system, but also extensive *experience* with the system and exposure to products (i.e., examples) that use the system. I.e., designing for D&D takes *research*.

E.g., I can't just follow the fairly complicated rules for assigning costs to a magic item. I have do that, *as well as* compare my new item to similar items and see how the costs compare. It's entirely possible to design an item by the book that is either too expensive or too cheap when finally compared to like items. And as for spells, the system of design is basically "look at other spells and make a judgement call."

What I like about HERO is that I'm not left with just the judgement call. Within or without the context of a setting, I can look at powers and evaluate them based on points, *in addition to* how they will be used. And, in general, I think that the points in HERO are balanced pretty well.

IOW, with d20, I feel more like the designers give me a machine in a sealed black box that I need to reverse-engineer. With HERO, it feels more like they're giving me a bunch of parts and some blueprints.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> BTW, unless i miss my guess, spell levels have been around longer than HERo math has, so if we apply the "older is more relaible" nons... errr... logic then DnD spell level assignments should be even more better at it than hero, right. They are older.



I'm not just saying older is better, as I have explained above. And to address another point, there tends to be just as much (if not more) quibbling about the accuracy of spell levels in D&D. E.g., 3.0 harm or haste. We just went through a major revision and people are still arguing about which spells are under/overpowered.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> both HERO and other game system have significant amounts of influence between "context/setting/genre and the VALUES/costs/levels that elements should be assigned. These influences must be assessed using judgement and reason and with direct assessment of the specific game in question.



Right. And the genre books publshed for HERO talk about this in depth. The end goal usually being an adjustment of costs for a given genre so that, you guessed it, the point values indeed mean something relative to context.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> uh huh. and you have not seen people creating unbalanced stuff in HERo i bet?



Not saying that at all. I will say, though, that the unbalanced stuff I see is more experienced players trying to get away with something than it is newbies. Newbies tend to make balanced stuff because they don't know any better. 



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> In DND, i dont need an experienced eye to tell me what letter the spell starts with either.



You'll need one to make an accurate spell level assignation, though.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Knowing the HERO point value of X does not mean it is easier to balance. It just means i have some number. Is that number useful?



Yes, IMHO. The number is backed up by a system and is not, as you seem to be asserting, wholly meaningless. I mean, I know that a 10th level character is more powerful than a 7th level one, in general, even if circumstances of setting make this less clear-cut. It's a baseline.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Would you, as an experienced hero player, bet money that two characters both built on 300 rp were balanced without seeing them?



I'd argue that the odds are pretty good.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> For instance, lets look at it another way...
> 
> BRICK 1 (200 rp)
> 
> ...



Well, technically, Brick 2 is 5 pts more effective. 205 > 200. He's got an Extra Limb and other guy doesn't.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> but what about
> 
> Brick 3a (either 234 or 189 depending on GM judgement on figured characteristics as outlined in HERO5)
> ...
> ...



I'm not sure I can address this, as IDHMBIFOM, and I don't know how you're arriving at these point costs. I'm also not sure how you can make a point-for-point comparison if you're possibly altering how figured characteristics are handled for one PC and not the others.

(Granted, that may be your point, but I don't see how it really supports what you're saying. I'm not claiming that HERO is perfect; I'm claiming that it simply gives you more pertinent data to work with. Which is really nice *if you like that sort of thing.*)



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> The math IMX does not provide guidance. it provides more work and what boils down to distraction. The focus becomes on the points and the points work or dont work dependingon the GM's totally subjective decisions, just like in the games where the GMs dont do the math.



You're welcome to feel this way. As usual, I think that arguments like these ("HERO is too crunchy," which is basically your argument) eventually boil down to taste, and nothing more.

Still, I think you're adding a level of arbitraryness to make your argument that I don't think really happens IRL. IME, a GM, as with any system, will set some ground rules, e.g., "Power X is not allowed in this setting," or "its cost has been adjusted for this setting to Y points per 1d6." I don't think any GM worth playing with is going to adjust the rules on a per-character basis.

Sure, a 150pt PC with access to magic or superpowers might in no way be balanced with a 150pt PC in a real-world military campaign... but I don't think HERO (or any other point-buy RPG) makes this claim. Comparing 10th level D&D and d20M PCs would be equally silly (as would comparing 10th level _Midnight_ PCs with 10th level _Living Greyhawk_ PCs).

Which may be your point.  Ultimately, balance in any RPG is in the hands of the GM. However, I still don't think that you've made a good case that point values in HERO are wholly worthless. "45pts" means something in HERO the same way that "5th level" means something in D&D. The difference is that HERO *shows you how they arrived at the 45 pts.* It's an added level of detail, that, IMO, gives a player or GM more to work with when assesing the value of a given construct in their campaign. The bricks you've posted above are themselves examples of this.

Granted, this level of detial may not be for everybody. And that's okay.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> besides, there is something inherently disengenuous of touting how much HERo helps inexperienced GMS. HERo is a complex toolkit build everything and enforce everything from scratch system which, frankly, i would not wish on an inexperienced GM who i personally had a grudge with. HERO is a toolkit system mostly favored by very experienced GMs who long ago overcame its steep learning curve.



I'm not sure who you're talking to here, as I did not tout HERO as being for inexperienced GMs (neither does Hero Games, really). I do, however, think that the HERO "toolkit" provides an excellent foundation for building things from scratch and, IMHO, serves this purpose better than d20. Granted, this is not d20's purpose, so it's sort of apples and oranges.


----------



## drnuncheon (Apr 19, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> but what about
> 
> Brick 3a (either 234 or 189 depending on GM judgement on figured characteristics as outlined in HERO5)
> Str 60 Dex 20 Con 30 Body 20 Int 10 ego 10 pre 10 com 10
> ...



 Not sure where you got your numbers there, sw.

 His extra limb isn't as strong as the rest of him?  Sounds like a limitation on extra limb to me.  Maybe -1/2, which would bring the cost down to 3 points, making the total character cost...203 points, right between the other two.  Wacky, isn't it?



> But in fact, looking at it using judgement, the latter guy should be right around the same cost as the other two. matter of fact, he should sit between the 200 and 205 mark.



 And so he is!

 Glad I could help.

J


----------



## Driddle (Apr 19, 2004)

So to recap, in a nutshell, the essence of the argument so far, the point of it all, is this: HERO is a better system, right? That's what I hear you guys saying.


----------



## buzz (Apr 19, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Glad I could help.



Nice.


----------



## buzz (Apr 19, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> So to recap, in a nutshell, the essence of the argument so far, the point of it all, is this: HERO is a better system, right? That's what I hear you guys saying.



Better than what? 

My position is simply that I heartily advocate HERO. It's in my Top 5 RPGs of all time (along with D&D3.x/d20). Whether it's better or worse than other systems is a matter of taste.


----------



## drnuncheon (Apr 19, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> So to recap, in a nutshell, the essence of the argument so far, the point of it all, is this: HERO is a better system, right? That's what I hear you guys saying.



 Better? Nah. That's completely personal preference.

 I just get bugged when people trash on a system and they aren't accurate. 

 J


----------



## Rackhir (Apr 19, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> I'm a little confused now.
> 
> So. ... Which system is best for superhero RPG?
> 
> (And hasn't there been a d20 adaptation of the Hero System?)




Relax, it's still Champions. What are you confused over by the way?

There are no D20 adaptations of Hero Games system, that I am aware of. A D20 adaptation of the Hero games system would pretty much be pointless, since there you are talking about systems that simply do not function the same way. Usually you get adaptations of worlds and game settings to the D20, at least that I am familiar with. The Champions universe is a fairly generic one, many of the villians are obvious pasteches of Familiar characters. So there is little that's unique to port over in that sense either.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> First off I'd have to agree that you definitely suffered from a bad DM. Lets face it an inflexible DM who demands that you run YOUR character however THEY think it should be run will ruin any game. Not to mention that it sounds like he did a piss poor job of designing the character to follow the concept you had. So it's not exactly fair to blame all of that on the system.



First, it doesn't sound like the gamemaster was telling him how to run his character; the gamemaster was adjudicating the rules, by the book.

Second, although an experienced gamemaster could have designed a better Spidey clone, I think it is fair to blame the system -- not completely, but to a very large extent -- because that same gamemaster wouldn't have had those problems running another system.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> Second, remember superheroes frequently don't spring full blown from the head of Zeus. Spiderman couldn't do everything you wanted the character to do right off the bat. He learned new ways and uses for his webs as time passed, improved the formula and created variations for specific circumstances. IE. he gained experience or in champions more power points and bought new powers/improvements on old ones.



I think you've successfully argued for a system where players can easily think up new uses for old powers, on the fly -- and then use them.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> A good example is water breathing vs +1 to hit (both 5 pts in hero.) Should they be the same cost for a water deep fantasy vs a dark sun desert fantasy? of course not. Should they be the same cost for a Phoenix AZ based superhero game as a NYC based superhero game where an atleantean sub mariner plot will be a main storyline? Of course not.



Is there _any_ system that solves that problem?  I can't imagine anything short of a "market" for powers with free-floating prices solving that problem -- and I'm not sure what great prize we get when we do solve the problem.


			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Knowing the HERO point value of X does not mean it is easier to balance. It just means i have some number. Is that number useful?



It may or may not be useful.  The linear pricing of stats and powers causes obvious problems.  A low-power attack is almost worthless; a high-power attack is a tremendous bargain.  The first few points of defense are worth every point; the more defense you already have, the less another point is worth.

Thus, two weak attacks combine for a tremendous waste of points -- until you introduce the multipower mechanic, which fixes things but adds quirky math.  One gigantic attack is generally too good -- so we add an arbitrary hard limit on how powerful attacks can be.

Literal immunity to a narrowly defined attack is still infinitely expensive, so we expect players to only buy a "reasonable" of defense against that attack -- but it's still far more expensive than it's worth.  If no one's ever going to hurt you badly enough with a fire attack to really hurt you, why bother paying to never, ever take even a single point of stun damage?

At any rate, I think many of these flaws are acceptible -- we don't have a better alternative -- but the false precision of the Hero system ignores the largely arbitrary nature of the numbers being crunched with such vigor.

Would Hero be an even better game if we took point values to two decimal places?


----------



## drnuncheon (Apr 20, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> I think you've successfully argued for a system where players can easily think up new uses for old powers, on the fly -- and then use them.




Generally, most (all that I've had experience with) HERO GMs will let you use a 'creative trick' if it makes sense.  If you try to use it often (like spidey and his webbing), they make you pay for it (since it's becoming a standard ability of your character).  If you use 'power stunts' all the time, they may even make you buy a VPP to represent it.

Gotta wonder how 'Webs' was bought, though, since one of the options on Entangle is 'opaque'.  Makes it very easy to buy Spiderman's webs (and was probably the reason for it).

J


----------



## Jhamin (Apr 20, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> So to recap, in a nutshell, the essence of the argument so far, the point of it all, is this: HERO is a better system, right? That's what I hear you guys saying.





To recap, in a nutshell.

Some of us like hero so much that we go on long tirades about how great it is.

Some of us dislike hero to the point that we will go into long tirades about how overblown it is.

Hero is one of those systems that just plain works different than D20.  It isn't a modification, or an improvement, or an imitator.  It just plain works different.  Some people love it's "break it down, then build the effect" philosophy.  Others just want their magic missle spell.  There will be eternal friction between these two camps.


To put it another way:

Have you ever heard:

-a couple of farmers debate International vs. Jon Deere?
-a couple of moterheads debate american vs. imports?
-a couple of computer nerds debate wintel vs. mac vs. linux?
-a couple of politicans debate republican vs. democrat?

A common theme is that either one will:
-plow your field
-let you take the highway to work
-let you recieve & print email
-cater to special interests


Both sides have their pros & cons.  Both sides have people who feel passionatly that theirs is the one true way and the other guys just don't get it.  That is what you are seeing here.

As for me, Hero is my system of choice.  I do play other systems, but only if they convince me that their custom mechanics add enough to the experience for me not to use hero.
I do run a longstanding 3.0/3.5 game, because I was nostalgic when 3.0 came out and it does what I wanted very well.  Now that we have reached moderate to high levels, if I had it all to do over I would seriously consider Fantasy Hero.  
I have read M&M and Tri-stat.  They have some very good points and I wouldn't mind playing them, but I love my Champions and don't see that they are as flexible while remaining consistant.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

Jhamin said:
			
		

> Hero is one of those systems that just plain works different than D20.  It isn't a modification, or an improvement, or an imitator.  It just plain works different.  Some people love it's "break it down, then build the effect" philosophy.  Others just want their magic missle spell.  There will be eternal friction between these two camps.



I don't think anyone here has been arguing against Hero's "break it down, then build the effect" philosophy and clamoring for their magic missile spell instead.  In fact, almost everyone agrees that Hero's effects-based power system is its strength -- as long as you don't define powers extremely narrowly.

My complaint, certainly, has been that it's a clumsy system, using too many numbers and too many mathematical operations for some fairly simple concepts (e.g., Con, Body, PD, ED, and Stun for toughness, with quirky die mechanics for damage rolls, etc.).


----------



## Agback (Apr 20, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Gotta wonder how 'Webs' was bought, though, since one of the options on Entangle is 'opaque'.  Makes it very easy to buy Spiderman's webs (and was probably the reason for it).




I'm sorry, but I don't remember. It must have been nearly (if not all of) twenty years since the incident, and I didn't undertand the gibberish on the character sheet at the time.

I have had better _Champions_ and _Hero System_ GMs since then. The story is only worth repeating because it illustrates the general proposition that the _Hero System_ powers representation system is designed to describe game effects, and that you sometimes have to get pretty verbose (and expensive) to describe world effects using it. This is an important part of the _Hero System_ experience.

Regards,


Agback


----------



## Driddle (Apr 20, 2004)

Jhamin said:
			
		

> Have you ever heard:
> 
> - a couple of farmers debate International vs. Jon Deere?




What do you have against farmers?


----------



## Jhamin (Apr 20, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> What do you have against farmers?




Nothing at all.  I come from a long line of them in fact.

My point was that there are some arguments that do not seem to have a "correct' answer, yet inspire very verbose arguments.


----------



## Driddle (Apr 20, 2004)

Jhamin said:
			
		

> Nothing at all.  I come from a long line of them in fact.
> 
> My point was that there are some arguments that do not seem to have a "correct' answer, yet inspire very verbose arguments.




And it's important to drag hardworking farmers into the argument? I don't think that's quite fair. It's not as though they don't have enough to worry about already. You have any idea how hard it is to make a living running a farm? 

I think you owe them an apology.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Generally, most (all that I've had experience with) HERO GMs will let you use a 'creative trick' if it makes sense.  If you try to use it often (like spidey and his webbing), they make you pay for it (since it's becoming a standard ability of your character).  If you use 'power stunts' all the time, they may even make you buy a VPP to represent it.



I actually agree.

This does point to something though: almost every power should be a VPP -- or should eventually evolve into a VPP. Why not build that into the system? Why not have a system where every power is effectively a multipower/VPP?


----------



## The_Gneech (Apr 20, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> There are no D20 adaptations of Hero Games system, that I am aware of. A D20 adaptation of the Hero games system would pretty much be pointless, since there you are talking about systems that simply do not function the same way.




Although _BESM d20_ does its level best!

   -The Gneech


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

mudpyr8 said:
			
		

> Hero is the Gamers' Toolkit. Says so on the book.



Then it must be true!   (Actually, I quite enjoy Hero's toolkit approach.)


			
				mudpyr8 said:
			
		

> Hero's flexibility allows you to do anything. Unfortunately, Hero's flexibility requires you to do everything.



Hero could be even more flexible with less math.  For instance, right now, a VPP is largely unplayable unless you either (a) precalculate the powers you're going to use ahead of time, or (b) handwave away the calculations.  Obviously, if you're going to regularly handwave away calculations, they're not integral to the game.


			
				mudpyr8 said:
			
		

> Many Hero players enjoy building their characters and playing the game. Other players just want to sit down and pick abilities from a list.



Although there is a conflict there, between the roll-your-own types and the pick-from-a-list types, that's not the only issue at hand.  A game can follow Hero's roll-your-own philosophy without all of Hero's complexity -- and especially without all of Hero's stats.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Not sure where you got your numbers there, sw.
> 
> His extra limb isn't as strong as the rest of him?  Sounds like a limitation on extra limb to me.  Maybe -1/2, which would bring the cost down to 3 points, making the total character cost...203 points, right between the other two.  Wacky, isn't it?
> 
> ...




What a marvellous notion.

Unfortunately, FRED is SPECIFC and CLEAR on how to do the weaker and clumsier extra limb. It is specifically spelled out under extra limbs in the rules.

Whatever ruleset you are using, it is not HERO5.

In HERO5, and BTW this has been asked, confirmed and answered by Steve long on the HERo QnA, you apply a limitation to the strength and dex, not the extra limb. 

Really, the specific issue is covered explicitly.

We could discuss this further but until you get up to speed on what the rules are, its probably not going to be too productive. 

Thats Ok tho... when you get back and have caught up, i will be here.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> Whatever ruleset you are using, it is not HERO5. [...] We could discuss this further but until you get up to speed on what the rules are, its probably not going to be too productive.



Could you please dial down the snarkiness?  You're debating rules minutia.  I know I certainly wouldn't base my decision on whether to use Hero, Tri-Stat SAS, or M&M on one bad ruling by Steve Long on where the limitation should go, Str & Dex or Extra Limb.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> Nice.




wow,... nice, but just plain wrong, at least by hero 5 rules.

I would really have expected hero supporters to know their own rules. The lack makes system discussions difficult.

sigh.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Better? Nah. That's completely personal preference.
> 
> I just get bugged when people trash on a system and they aren't accurate.
> 
> J




Which is ahilarious given you did not know the explicit rules on how to do the weak extra limb thingy. 

Again, see FRED under extra limbs and you will see how to do it right.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> Could you please dial down the snarkiness?  You're debating rules minutia.  I know I certainly wouldn't base my decision on whether to use Hero, Tri-Stat SAS, or M&M on one bad ruling by Steve Long on where the limitation should go, Str & Dex or Extra Limb.




Ok but would you use the printed rules from the book specifically stated in the power in question?

Its not "one bad ruling." its specifically stated in the book. its under extra limb.

all the long reference was was a confirmation thats that what he intended, with much the same example given.

As for tone, when someone laughs about people inaccurately using examples few posts after erroneously claiming i was wrong, they ought to have at least cracked the book to see if i was right... don't you think?


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Well, I like HERO a lot, but he's got a point - there's a lot of granularity that, because of things like skills being based on 9+CHA/5, and CV being based on DEX/3, doesn't really _matter_.



By the way, is there any rationale for CV being based on Dex/3 rather than Dex/5?


----------



## buzz (Apr 20, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> By the way, is there any rationale for CV being based on Dex/3 rather than Dex/5?



It seems to work with how attack rolls are figured (11 + OCV - DCV).


----------



## Thanee (Apr 20, 2004)

I suppose that's because otherwise the differences would be almost non-existant. 

 And don't forget, that DEX is quite expensive (3 per point) compared to many other stats.

 Bye
 Thanee


----------



## Thanee (Apr 20, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> It seems to work with how attack rolls are figured (11 + OCV - DCV).



 That doesn't make much difference since DCV = OCV (w/o levels and such). The roll would always be the same regardless how CV was calculated.

 Bye
 Thanee


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> It seems to work with how attack rolls are figured (11 + OCV - DCV).



How does CV being based on Dex/3 rather than Dex/5 work better for that formula?


----------



## buzz (Apr 20, 2004)

Less granular, I suppose. Seeing as you saw Stat/5 as too granular for characteristic rolls, I figured you'd be happy about Stat/3 being used for combat.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> Less granular, I suppose. Seeing as you saw Stat/5 as too granular for characteristic rolls, I figured you'd be happy about Stat/3 being used for combat.



I didn't see Stat/5 as too granular for characteristic rolls; I just thought we should divide all stats by five to get to the _real_ stats underlying the actual game mechanics.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> When I say "a difference between subjective and arbitrary," I'm not trying to assign either adjective to the systems being discussed. I'm trying to say something about how you're using the word "subjective." The tone of your post implied (to me) that by saying point costs in HERO are "subjective", you're saying that they're "arbitrary." I.e., that the designers just assigned point values willy-nilly, and the costs of individual powers have no relation to each other.



OK, lets try this then...

when i say "subjective", how about you assume i mean "subjective". Then you don't have to spend a lot of time refuting an argument i never made.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Ergo, in the settingless "baseline" of HERO, the point costs are generally in balance with each other. Work continues, of course...



however, this is one of the rubs. I don't know of anyone who has ever run a "settingless" game. Do you? A perfectly balanced settingless system does not mean you get a "more or less balanced" setting system. Even if HERO managed to achieve perfect balance in its settingless system, it manages to perfect a game no one plays.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> designing for D&D takes *research*.



No argument. That applies to every system IMO... although i guess one should add "quality" in there somewhere


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> E.g., I can't just follow the fairly complicated rules for assigning costs to a magic item. I have do that, *as well as* compare my new item to similar items and see how the costs compare. It's entirely possible to design an item by the book that is either too expensive or too cheap when finally compared to like items. And as for spells, the system of design is basically "look at other spells and make a judgement call."



Yes... and that is because they know that a point buy system does not work, or at least, does not work infallibly enough to eradicate the "look at it and see if it makes sense" final stage.

HERo doesn't either. otherwise Long wouldn't be citing his "use common sense, dramatic sense, common sense and a sense of balance" mantra so often.



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> What I like about HERO is that I'm not left with just the judgement call. Within or without the context of a setting, I can look at powers and evaluate them based on points, *in addition to* how they will be used. And, in general, I think that the points in HERO are balanced pretty well.



So if i get this right... using your chosen example of DND magic items, in DND you use the cost structure to get a value and thenyou also have to use a final judgement/comparison test, and thats whats wrong with DND design.

In HERo, you can get a number and use it as well as the final judgement stage and thats whats right with hero.

Is that about right?

FWIW, for me, just skip directly to the final judgement and comparison, based on your campaign, story, characters etc. the numbers are so often wrong as to be more of a distraction than a boon. (Thats for both systems.)


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> IOW, with d20, I feel more like the designers give me a machine in a sealed black box that I need to reverse-engineer. With HERO, it feels more like they're giving me a bunch of parts and some blueprints.



and the rub is... how accurate are those blueprints? 
if you were building a house and got blueprints for a boat, that wouldn't do you much good now would it.

The hero numbers are accurate if and only if the GM runs his game to make those numbers accurate. They are not accurate because of years of tweaking.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'm not just saying older is better, as I have explained above. And to address another point, there tends to be just as much (if not more) quibbling about the accuracy of spell levels in D&D. E.g., 3.0 harm or haste. We just went through a major revision and people are still arguing about which spells are under/overpowered.



YES YES YES YES!!!!

Whether its HERO5 with millenia of complex comparisons done by cloned einsteisn or DND with decades of extensive playtest done by trained monkeys, there is never uniform agreement on the "right" values. The reason is simple... values depend on usefulness and usefulness varies from campaign to campaign and that wont change no matter how many numbers you crunch.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Right. And the genre books publshed for HERO talk about this in depth. The end goal usually being an adjustment of costs for a given genre so that, you guessed it, the point values indeed mean something relative to context.



Really... see i own star hero and champions genre books for 5e and i really do not recall any "in depth" cost changes running around. As matter of fact, those genre books seemed to do not a lot with the system costs at all, beyond provide a number of character templates and prefigured gear using basically the normal rules.

If i go home tonight and pull star hero from under the table, wioll i be able to find 10 confirmed "change this cost from the core rulebook" examples specifically and in depthly discussed... maybe for instance they told you something like "hey, as compared to the baseline game, safe environment vacuum is very useful in space opera games and should cost more than 2-3 pts." 

I am out on a limb here, because i really don't recall. What value did they suggest raising "safe in a vacuum" to for these campaigns?

???


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Not saying that at all. I will say, though, that the unbalanced stuff I see is more experienced players trying to get away with something than it is newbies. Newbies tend to make balanced stuff because they don't know any better.



Actually i see a lot more imbalance among newbies. It is frequent that newbies create characters in hero way too weak to be comparable in performance to their fellow players who have more experience. Newbies don't automatically jump into the basic system milking expected... milking the myriad breakpoints, not recognizing the "not worth what its costing" hero-isms like area attacks and such. (imbalance in the other direction is just as bad, perhaps worse if it convinces a new player to drop it.)

the "learning curve" and its impact on character construction is one of the big negatives to hero... imo.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> You'll need one to make an accurate spell level assignation, though.



YEs, you will. To me, thats an understood reality... not a bad thing at all.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Yes, IMHO. The number is backed up by a system and is not, as you seem to be asserting, wholly meaningless. I mean, I know that a 10th level character is more powerful than a 7th level one, in general, even if circumstances of setting make this less clear-cut. It's a baseline.



But see, thats the difference... within say DND setting, 10th level has meaning because the class structure means a common set of traits.

In HERo, "built on 350 pts" does not mean anything. It could be 350 pts of skills, it could be 350 pts of all combat crunchiness. It could be 350 pts milked to the max by an experienced hero guru using ECs, MPs, VPPs, well contructed synergies, etc or it could mean 350 pts built with basi flat out powers without frameworks and a whole lot less power even with the same design goals.

A level within a structured set of classes does indeed provide you with some meaning, does indeed serve as a shortcut for guestimating the "general power level" but total points in HERo does not.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'm not sure I can address this, as IDHMBIFOM, and I don't know how you're arriving at these point costs. I'm also not sure how you can make a point-for-point comparison if you're possibly altering how figured characteristics are handled for one PC and not the others.



Uh, i am simply following the rules. Unfortunately, the rules leave it to GM judgement to a slight degree on whether or not the figs come free or not when a lim is applied. I would rule, using the stated rules, that the limitation to the strength and dex does not limit the figs and thus, by the book, the figs are lost.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> (Granted, that may be your point, but I don't see how it really supports what you're saying. I'm not claiming that HERO is perfect; I'm claiming that it simply gives you more pertinent data to work with. Which is really nice *if you like that sort of thing.*)



I love pertinent data. We just disagree on whether the math and costs and final prices produced by HERo are pertinent data. I think the final results are nothing more than values the Gm can use to script his encounters to make "turn out to be right". I don't think DND or stargate or anything else is more accurate, just easier and quicker to get to.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> You're welcome to feel this way. As usual, I think that arguments like these ("HERO is too crunchy," which is basically your argument) eventually boil down to taste, and nothing more.



 i think hero is unnecessarily crunchy. I think its more work for no gain. 


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Still, I think you're adding a level of arbitraryness to make your argument that I don't think really happens IRL. IME, a GM, as with any system, will set some ground rules, e.g., "Power X is not allowed in this setting," or "its cost has been adjusted for this setting to Y points per 1d6." I don't think any GM worth playing with is going to adjust the rules on a per-character basis.



Would it surprise you to find many GMs, some considered decent, do just that? The PHb and DMG go into some degree of detail on altering the rules for chargen for character-by-character basic... tweaking classes, skill lists abilities etc. I know i have and i know the best Gms i have run under did do this.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Sure, a 150pt PC with access to magic or superpowers might in no way be balanced with a 150pt PC in a real-world military campaign... but I don't think HERO (or any other point-buy RPG) makes this claim. Comparing 10th level D&D and d20M PCs would be equally silly (as would comparing 10th level _Midnight_ PCs with 10th level _Living Greyhawk_ PCs).



Well all i can say is, i have not mentioned comparing characters across genres. I don't do cross genre campaigns. 

However, i have heard hero players on the boards tout hero as good for cross-genre campaigns, since they can just port the characters over.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Which may be your point.  Ultimately, balance in any RPG is in the hands of the GM. However, I still don't think that you've made a good case that point values in HERO are wholly worthless. "45pts" means something in HERO the same way that "5th level" means something in D&D. The difference is that HERO *shows you how they arrived at the 45 pts.* It's an added level of detail, that, IMO, gives a player or GM more to work with when assesing the value of a given construct in their campaign. The bricks you've posted above are themselves examples of this.



5th level means something given their are a prescribed set of classes.

45 pts does not have the same meaning, Nor does 350 pts, because of the lack of context and structured chargen. 

Again, would you be willing to say that in a HERO-powered campaign (say modern supers of the Avengers flavor built onn 350 pts using the baselines established by the FRED/CHAMPIONS book for defenses of 20/10 and such) that two 60 pts power are of equal effectiveness? 

Is that too broad?

What if we limit it to attack powers? 

is that still too broad? Too shakey ground to commit to? too uncertain in hero terms?

lets limit it to ~45 ap attack powers built on an energy blast base? I add the "~" because hero math wont let me make everything exactly 45 pts. give me say 44-46 pts.

I will save you some time...

Against 20 pt defenses... 

Firebolt: 9d6 EB (45 pts) gets something like 11 stun thru conservative average per hit. Thats a reasonably effective power.

Fireball: 4 1/2 d6 Area Of Effect 2" radius (46 ap) will average little if anything thru... most of the time doing nothing, but doing it to more people.

This isn't a complex hero build power, or some oddball crooked up "players would never imagine that" type of thing. 

both 45 pts, or close.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'm not sure who you're talking to here, as I did not tout HERO as being for inexperienced GMs (neither does Hero Games, really).




you however did bring to focus the need for experience to design for d20.

So in D20 a problem is that you need experience to design stuff, but HERO is not good for inexperienced Gms anyway.

So, if you are an experienced Gm with an experienced eye, you have what you need to  design for either system, but with HERo, you have a lot of nifty math too!

is that right?

Hmmm...


----------



## buzz (Apr 20, 2004)

(This was a response to mmadsen's last post; but I wasn't quick enough.)

Oh, so you want to play Fuzion, then? 

As was pointed out earlier, the stats do matter as-is, even if (in cases like INT or PRE) it's just how the points interact with Drain/Aid. As was also pointed out, HERO isn't alone in this regard (e.g., d20), so I don't know it needs to be singled out.

For sake of discussion, what system(s) do you think does what HERO does but does it with numbers you find more streamlined? TriStat? M&M? GURPS? the aforementioned Fuzion?


----------



## drnuncheon (Apr 20, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> I didn't see Stat/5 as too granular for characteristic rolls; I just thought we should divide all stats by five to get to the _real_ stats underlying the actual game mechanics.



  That's pretty much what Fuzion did.

  J


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> Oh, so you want to play Fuzion, then?



Actually, no.  I think that _one_ change was a good one though.  For the most part, I feel that Fuzion simplified the aspects of Hero that benefited from their complexity (powers, with multiplication and division for advantages and limitations), and kept much of the complexity that didn't help (numerous stats).


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> As was also pointed out, HERO isn't alone in this regard (e.g., d20), so I don't know it needs to be singled out.



It's a minor flaw in d20; it's a much bigger flaw in Hero.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> For sake of discussion, what system(s) do you think does what HERO does but does it with numbers you find more streamlined? TriStat? M&M? GURPS? the aforementioned Fuzion?



I don't think _any_ system retains Hero's "good" complexity and discards its "bad" complexity.  I was hoping fifth edition would move in that direction, but it obviously didn't.

Of the games you mentioned, I'm least familiar with M&M -- and, perhaps for that reason, I see the most promise there.


----------



## hong (Apr 20, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> Of the games you mentioned, I'm least familiar with M&M -- and, perhaps for that reason, I see the most promise there.



The trick with M&M is to eat the red ones last.


Hong "but, of course, you knew this already" Ooi


----------



## buzz (Apr 20, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> So if i get this right... using your chosen example of DND magic items, in DND you use the cost structure to get a value and thenyou also have to use a final judgement/comparison test, and thats whats wrong with DND design.



I'm not claiming anything's wrong with D&D. I'm a drooling D&D fanboy. I'm just countering your assertion that HERO's toolkit nature doesn't provide any mroe guidance than D&D/d20. I think that it does, because you're not reverse-engineering everything; you've got a system that is designed to build things from scratch. D&D, even at it's most detailed (of which magic item creation is probably the best example), relies more on eyeballing things, becasue the inner workings are much more hidden.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> FWIW, for me, just skip directly to the final judgement and comparison, based on your campaign, story, characters etc. the numbers are so often wrong as to be more of a distraction than a boon. (Thats for both systems.)



That's cool. Again, things boil down to preference.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Really... see i own star hero and champions genre books for 5e and i really do not recall any "in depth" cost changes running around. As matter of fact, those genre books seemed to do not a lot with the system costs at all, beyond provide a number of character templates and prefigured gear using basically the normal rules.



See the magic system creation chapter in _Fantasy HERO_.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Well all i can say is, i have not mentioned comparing characters across genres. I don't do cross genre campaigns.



Then I'm not really sure what your argument is. If you want to put the same limitation on HERO that you have in D&D --i.e., restriction to a single genre/setting with codified rules and guidelines-- I don't see how points in HERO are any less of a valuable metric than levels are in D&D.

Sure, you can argue that, blind, I have no idea how two 350pt HERO PCs compare to each other. You haven't told me what genre we're talking about, or what active point limitations are in effect, and so on. Now, if you asked me whether two standard Champions Universe 350pt PCs were balanced against each other, I'd say odds are yes. As with D&D, there's a context and structure there for me to make a judgement. The points mean something.

OTOH, the argument you're making now is like asking me if all FUDGE characters are balanced with each other. Seeing as FUDGE can be used for anything from _Watership Down_ to _Dragonball Z_, it's a nonsensical question without any context.

Ergo, why I brought up comparisons between different d20 games. It puts you in the same boat.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> 45 pts does not have the same meaning, Nor does 350 pts, because of the lack of context and structured chargen.



The lack of context and structured chargen is the *point* of HERO. You seem to be arguing more against generic RPGs than you are point-based RPGs.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Against 20 pt defenses...
> 
> Firebolt: 9d6 EB (45 pts) gets something like 11 stun thru conservative average per hit. Thats a reasonably effective power.
> 
> ...



There's only a discrepancy here if you're talking about a campaign that consists of nothing but NPCs with 20+ point defenses who always attack one at a time. IRL, campaigns tend not to work that way. The powers balance out due to the trade-off between damage and area of effect.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> So in D20 a problem is that you need experience to design stuff, but HERO is not good for inexperienced Gms anyway.



With HERO, the very act of chargen and playing the game is learning how to design with the system. With D&D, there's extra effort involved (IMO); you need to pry open the black box and figure out how it works. With HERO, *you* are the one who built the box in the first place.

This does not make HERO "better" than D&D/d20. It just makes it a toolkit. Each approach has its appeal. IOW, sometimes you want to pop open a Terminal window and get at the command line; sometimes, you want to point and click and get immediate results.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

mudpyr8 said:
			
		

> I agree that many Hero resources are presented in a "crunchy" manner. This doesn't mean there isn't good source material there, and many of the campaign sourcebooks are excellent.



In fact, Aaron Allston's _Strikeforce_ is one of the best campaign sourcebooks _ever_.


----------



## Rackhir (Apr 20, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> First, it doesn't sound like the gamemaster was telling him how to run his character; the gamemaster was adjudicating the rules, by the book.
> 
> Second, although an experienced gamemaster could have designed a better Spidey clone, I think it is fair to blame the system -- not completely, but to a very large extent -- because that same gamemaster wouldn't have had those problems running another system.




Your arguments seem to come down to nitpicking. Yes, you can blame the system instead of the DM or the player. IF you ignore the fact that the DM created a very bad character and the player didn't understand the system well enough to work within the rules or take advantage of what he could actually do vs what he thought the character should be able to do.

Are there other systems where the problem might not have arisen in the same situation, sure. However it's just as likely that the DM would have still done a piss poor job of creating the character and denied him doing anything that didn't fit in with the DM's conception of what the character was and could do. 

Incompetence and stupidity have a way of screwing things up irregardless of the situation. 

The question you are asking is "Is there a system with a mechanic that could have fixed this situation". And your response seems to be that if there is, then Champions is a horrible system.

A much better and more reasonable question to ask is

"Is there a method where the character could have done what he wanted in Champions" - The answer to this is clearly and unarguably YES. 

To me that means that the fault lies with the creator of the character and to a lesser extent the player. However, he was handed a character that did almost nothing that he was expecting to be able to do. Second, he was a newbie player. Holding a newbie to the strict letter of rules he doesn't understand for a character he didn't create is simply obnoxious behavior. So again I think we can blame the DM for that.



			
				mmadsen said:
			
		

> I think you've successfully argued for a system where players can easily think up new uses for old powers, on the fly -- and then use them.




Here you are not only nitpicking, but ignoring most of my arguments and their context to come up with a conclusion that is the anthesis of what I was arguing. You are even ignoring the fact that I stated specifically HOW to do in Champions, exactly what you are complaining Champions doesn't do. 

Are you simply trolling for flames?


----------



## Henry (Apr 20, 2004)

Hello. Just hearing some voices being raised, thought I'd check in and see if everything's OK. It's nice to see the earlier problems are being smoothed out with one another.

Carry on, all.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'm not claiming anything's wrong with D&D. I'm a drooling D&D fanboy. I'm just countering your assertion that HERO's toolkit nature doesn't provide any mroe guidance than D&D/d20. I think that it does, because you're not reverse-engineering everything; you've got a system that is designed to build things from scratch. D&D, even at it's most detailed (of which magic item creation is probably the best example), relies more on eyeballing things, becasue the inner workings are much more hidden.



They are not "more hideen". There is not some secret formula running around that WOTC keeps squirrelled away. Things are effect-defined and comparison-valued and playtested. Its all up front. The closest to formulas and secret inner workings are the spell level benchmarks and what not which are indeed "hidden" in the DMg section on, get this, making custom spells.




			
				buzz said:
			
		

> See the magic system creation chapter in _Fantasy HERO_.



So, the fantasy hero genre book is the one that starts with the point costs? Not the other genre books? 

I stopped buying after Star HEro, which means i got the champions one, one of the martial arts ones and star hero. I had indeed hoped for just what you claimed... good in depth info about adjusting the costs and such to meet the genre and game... and it was lacking...

I did find out tho, for instance, that the ability to improve your combat CV by up to +2 by spending actions to raise it and only when fighting with certain individuals COSTS (24 pts: combat array) 33% more than just buying the dexterity (18 pts) and reaping the benefits of the Cv and the dex and other things it brings without the need for losing actions or having a specific partner. (This also, printed specifically in the books and confirmed by Long.)

This, the vacuum space thingy, etc  did not lend me to think the subsequent genre books would have turned the corner so drastically.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Then I'm not really sure what your argument is. If you want to put the same limitation on HERO that you have in D&D --i.e., restriction to a single genre/setting with codified rules and guidelines-- I don't see how points in HERO are any less of a valuable metric than levels are in D&D.



I have no problem with restricting it to a genre. Say the champions style avengers campaign. In such a campaign, would you be willing to bet money two 350 pt characters were balanced? 


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Sure, you can argue that, blind, I have no idea how two 350pt HERO PCs compare to each other. You haven't told me what genre we're talking about, or what active point limitations are in effect, and so on. Now, if you asked me whether two standard Champions Universe 350pt PCs were balanced against each other, I'd say odds are yes. As with D&D, there's a context and structure there for me to make a judgement. The points mean something.



I gotta say, this is flumoxing.

I have seen numerous posts on the hero boards where someone asks about balancing characters and how to do it and almost to a man everyone when asked about using total points basically said that wont work. Long lists of comparisons of CVs, AP limits, Dexes, stun values, con stun benchmarks, various rules of X etc were given time and time again and no one said... "just go by total real points and odds are you are probably gonna be OK."

It appears they all could learn something from you. They are really overcomplicating things if indeed, as you say, total points will handle it.



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> OTOH, the argument you're making now is like asking me if all FUDGE characters are balanced with each other. Seeing as FUDGE can be used for anything from _Watership Down_ to _Dragonball Z_, it's a nonsensical question without any context.



Nope.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Ergo, why I brought up comparisons between different d20 games. It puts you in the same boat.



I am happy with sticking to a single genre. 


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> The lack of context and structured chargen is the *point* of HERO. You seem to be arguing more against generic RPGs than you are point-based RPGs.



nope.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> There's only a discrepancy here if you're talking about a campaign that consists of nothing but NPCs with 20+ point defenses who always attack one at a time. IRL, campaigns tend not to work that way. The powers balance out due to the trade-off between damage and area of effect.



Wow... it just happens? The powers just balances themselves?

Sure, thats the party line... the area makes up for it... 

I dont think so. but then, i do the math...

See, whereas you think the powers will balance in an averngers style champions game, i did say that right? I think it might, or it might not.

I think it depends on how many of the adversaries are "agent level" guys with really low defenses that come in close clusters... after all a 2" radius AOE is only 3 hexes diameter... about 18' across. 

But then we run into, of course, the fact that guys packed in that closely can be hit by spreading the EB... against say three guys in that size i can drop my EB to 6d6 and get an attack roll against all three... or i could throw the 4 1/2 d6 Eb. if i assume these villains have defenses half as good as the heroes... say 10 total, then the aoe gets about 7 stun thru per person (not enough to knock them out and not enough to even con stun a normal guy) but the 6d6 is gonna average about 11 thru. 

Even if you assume i miss with one of the three attack rolls, thats still getting as much damage thru. (and 11 would con stun a "normal" though likely not an agent type.)

So, how often would you expect these avengers style PCs to be going against these weaker adversaries where noticeable stun goes thru on 4 1/2 d6 vs how often they will be meeting supers level guys with defenses in the 15-20 range? How often would the DCVs of these weaker bad guys be high enough to make spreading for three to hit rolls doing 6d6 be a worse choice than dropping the 4 1/2 d6 aoe in? Just give me a ballpark range?

See, based on the numbers, doing the math, it looks like this super group would need to have MOST of its adversaries in the fights they play against in the weak level defenses of 10 tops , and as many of the "unarmored normal guy" with EDs of 2-5 as they meet of supers with EDs of 15-20 to have these two attacks come off as "balanced". 

Thats not like any 350 champions level game i have ever seen.
Its definitely not an avengers style game.

If a player brought me a character for champions with a 9d6 firebolt as his attack power, i would tell him... thats low but serviceable. If thats what you want, it can work, but realize you wont be the heavy hitter." and in most scenarios he would be doing damage.

EDIT: For instance, even with campaign attack norms of 10-12d6, if this was his attack power, it would be good enough for him to balance out with say a higher OCV than normal... he does less per hit, but rarely misses and takes difficult shots with ease. He might find it possible to use it to hit small targets like held items and knock them from villains hands. This is a viable attack power even if a little below average DCs and APs for such a game.

If he brought me the same guy with the 4 1/2 d6 aoe as his attack power, i would tell him "in this game, that wont work. You will be mostly fighting supers, with some agents now and again, but most of the guys you will be wanting to shoot at will have defenses of 10-20 and that power just wont be useful often enough to warrant that value."

What would you tell these two guys? 

How many times would your avengers guys out of say 10 "combats you play out fully" would go against "guys with def less than 5", guys with defenses less than 10" etc in order to balance these two powers? 

What circumstances would occur frequently enough to allow the AOE guy to see his AOE as better than the spread EB guys? 

Do we have hoardes of average joe speedsters every other week?


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> Your arguments seem to come down to nitpicking. Yes, you can blame the system instead of the DM or the player. IF you ignore the fact that the DM created a very bad character and the player didn't understand the system well enough to work within the rules or take advantage of what he could actually do vs what he thought the character should be able to do.



Actually, it seems like the point is much simpler than that...
the default in HERo is that what you want to be able to do is either FREE (maneuvers and such) or it is bought with very little room in between.

Super-heroes are often not that limited. They frequently come up with creative uses on the fly that may never be used again.

To require IN DESIGN of characters who want to have that ability to either 
a. use VPPs (thats cool for newbie intro games... hand them a VPP!!)
b. detail every power usage
c. or now, in FRED, buy up the use power skill and HOPE this Gm is nice in his entirely subjective interpretation of how much can be done.

is seeming wrong..

Now, as a for example... in Mutants and Masterminds...

every hero can, without a VPP, without buying a skill and such, without thinking of every power combo imaginable, spend extra effort (in pre\actice a hero point) to add a power/extra or feat or stunt that makes sense for a short time (in some cases maybe an hour.)

Webs wants to web-in-the-eyes? He says extra effort, spends a hero point to avoid the downsides, and sploosh, he makes a dazzle attack against the bad guy. roll to hit, enemy makes reflex save to avoid, or he is blinded. 

its quite simple and very much gets the "just like in the comics" feel. BTW. i often got comments of "wow, just like in the comics" when my guys were doing mnm characters after our hero games folded. Interestingly, in well over a decade, almost two, of HERo Gming, i never ever heard anyone exhult during hero chargen "wow, just like in the comics."

I have seen other D20 games which use the action dice or hero points mechanic to allow "use a feat you do not have for a scene" as well.



			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> Are there other systems where the problem might not have arisen in the same situation, sure. However it's just as likely that the DM would have still done a piss poor job of creating the character and denied him doing anything that didn't fit in with the DM's conception of what the character was and could do.



There is a difference between the Gm not going beyond the rules and him just screwing up. 


			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> Incompetence and stupidity have a way of screwing things up irregardless of the situation.



Which does not mean the system was good or right.

Honestly, the example he gave seems to be a mediocre GM who WAS playing by the rules. Did he provide a well rounded character? nope.
Did he provide a character that goodly imitates spidey? nope.
But was his refusal to allow off the cuff powers that were not prefigured wrong or an abuse of the system? nope.
is it a characteristic of HERo, back then if not now, that its common and routine for powers not paid for to be allopwed off the cuff? nope.


			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> The question you are asking is "Is there a system with a mechanic that could have fixed this situation". And your response seems to be that if there is, then Champions is a horrible system.



or possibly not one well suited for the hurley burly world of supers. i mean, it is possible that there are some genres hero doesn't do perfectly, isn't it?


			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> A much better and more reasonable question to ask is
> "Is there a method where the character could have done what he wanted in Champions" - The answer to this is clearly and unarguably YES.



I would add... "reasonably"

I mean just because given a 100 slot long multipower i CAN do spidey, doesn't mean that this is a good thing, especially if common PCs wont be able to pull that off in chargen.

I mean, sure, he could have handed the player a char sheet with VPP 200 pts cosmic power web powers... but that would not be any more playable.

I think perhaps, had the game had a mechanic similar to MnMs, where say a limited number of "off the cuff" powers could be described by the newbie player and quickly handled in play (the MnM would simply be a dazzle at the same level as the web, in HERo maybe a flash vs sight of similar ap poof done) then he would have walked away wanting to play the system.

What the Gm showed him was with HERo its about the points. Its about the chargen. 

Had the game provided a reasonable mechanic in the to allow you to adapt on the fly off the cuff, he would have walked away with a sense of it being about the playing, not the building, about the choices and not the points, about the do and not the buy.

HERO5 has begun to move that way with the vague and unspecific POWER SKILL.
However, IMO, as hard and precise as HERO is, I find those who played it a lot tended to avoid the vague and unspecific parts in favor of the hard and defined.


----------



## Rackhir (Apr 20, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> Actually, it seems like the point is much simpler than that...
> the default in HERo is that what you want to be able to do is either FREE (maneuvers and such) or it is bought with very little room in between.
> 
> Super-heroes are often not that limited. They frequently come up with creative uses on the fly that may never be used again.
> ...




Champions does reward good character design, but can you tell me of a system where bad character designs are effective? Every system has little tricks and techniques for improving characters that aren't immediately obvious.

You keep repeating "detail every power usage" as if it is some impossiblity. Nearly all character concepts have limits to them. No rational person can make a decent argument for "web" powers enabling you to travel FTL. For a spider man character it's not terribly difficult to come up with a multipower that has pretty much anything you are likely to think of in play. 

Keep in mind that a lot of the "New power uses" you get in comics are simply plot devices that the author thought would look cool/solve the plot problem for this issue. RPGs can't permit an unlimited flexibility in that way, because there is such a thing as balance issues. Iron Man doesn't have to worry about skewing everything if he suddenly has the DeusExMachina gadget that exactly solves this issue's plot problem. DMs do.

As for the VPPs. They are only necessary if you demand ABSOLUTE flexibility. Are they suitable for newbies, no not really. However the MM system you describe is equally useless to someone who doesn't know the system or the powers, WITHOUT assistance. A little bit of help from the DM or players would handle the problems of using the VPP, just like you'd have to do for a newbie in MM.

I'll admit it would be nice to have a little bit more flexibilty in the use of your powers to cover some of those odd little situations that might arise. However, I've played champions for a long time (about 20yrs) and I have found that if you don't have a DM who keeps the game system in a straightjacket, it is not a problem. That is what the DM is for, providing judgement, otherwise you might as well be playing a computer game with indestructable doors.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> There is a difference between the Gm not going beyond the rules and him just screwing up.
> 
> Which does not mean the system was good or right.
> 
> ...




So your argument seems to be that no matter how poorly the characters are built or the campaign run. If another system run by a competent DM and using a well designed character, will accomplish what was desired then it is the fault of the system in the first example? 

A certain amount of flexibility is neccessary for a well run campaign. No system ever covers all the situations and possibilities that arise. If the DM can't provide flexibility then the game is going to suck, no matter the virtues or vices of the system. 



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> or possibly not one well suited for the hurley burly world of supers.




You are the first person I've ever seen to argue that HERO system is not suited to running Superheroes. I admire you for being able to type that with a straight face.


----------



## buzz (Apr 20, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> They are not "more hideen". There is not some secret formula running around that WOTC keeps squirrelled away. Things are effect-defined and comparison-valued and playtested. Its all up front. The closest to formulas and secret inner workings are the spell level benchmarks and what not which are indeed "hidden" in the DMg section on, get this, making custom spells.



I don't agree. The core books do not go into much detail about what's "under the hood" in D&D. You have to look for it. E.g., the spell design rules are of less use, IMO, if you're designing something that doesn't have an obvious gauge of power, like dice of damage. Ditto creating classes. The assumpiton is that you're modifying an existing class, not building one from scratch. The class design document that was floating arond the 'Net when 3e was first released, and to a certain extent BESMd20, exist because the core books *don't* really explicitly explain how to build things from scratch, so third-parties decided to try and reveal the "underlayment" on their own.

Thankfully, this edition of D&D is rigorous enough that the underpinnings can be discovered, with some effort.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> It appears they all could learn something from you. They are really overcomplicating things if indeed, as you say, total points will handle it.



I would ask again that you dial down the snarkiness.

It's not my position that HERO is *perfect*. I just don't think that, as you seem to claim, its point system it utterly worthless, nor that it pales in comparison to the available metrics in D&D. Given a setting context, you can look at points and derive meaning from them, not to mention, see all the building blocks laid bare. I *like* this, and I don't see using the system as a waste of time. If you don't like this and prefer the way D&D does things, that's great. Go and have fun.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> What circumstances would occur frequently enough to allow the AOE guy to see his AOE as better than the spread EB guys?



IIRC, the AOE attack only needs to target a hex, i.e., DCV 3 (or 0 if adjacent), as opposed to the DCV of your average agent or super, i.e., DCV 5-8. I think that rolling a *single attack* that affects multiple opponents at a time against a DCV *2-5 pips lower* is a frequent enough circumstance to justify the attack as just as useful as Mr. EB Spread (who has to roll separate attacks against each opponent at their full DCV).


----------



## buzzard (Apr 20, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> You are the first person I've ever seen to argue that HERO system is not suited to running Superheroes. I admire you for being able to type that with a straight face.




HERO is good at running superheroes in its own genre. It doesn't really make it if you care to simulate comic books. 

However, if detailed tactical combat between carefully constructed supers is your thing, it is probably champ(ions). 

buzzard


----------



## buzz (Apr 20, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> You are the first person I've ever seen to argue that HERO system is not suited to running Superheroes. I admire you for being able to type that with a straight face.



Actually, ace HERO illustrator Storn Cook has done as much, and he makes a fairly convincing argument, precisely by citing things like M&M's Hero Points. I generally agree with him that supers in HERO (and HERO in general) could benefit from a similar Hero Point/Dramatic Editiing/Action Dice sort of mechanic. Of course, not everybody likes their games that "cinematic," so it's sort of a toss-up. The supers campaign I've been in for the last year hasn't really suffered for lack of this, FWIW.

Storn put it like this (paraphrased): "HERO can basically handle every genre, but it handles some genres better than others." To his reckoning, HERO is really good for certain types of supers and fairly cinematic heroic-level campaigns, e.g., modern-day mercenaries, SF, some types of fantasy, etc. In general, I think he's made a fair assessment. A lot fairer than the one being made here, at least...


----------



## swrushing (Apr 20, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> IIRC, the AOE attack only needs to target a hex, i.e., DCV 3 (or 0 if adjacent), as opposed to the DCV of your average agent or super, i.e., DCV 5-8. I think that rolling a *single attack* that affects multiple opponents at a time against a DCV *2-5 pips lower* is a frequent enough circumstance to justify the attack as just as useful as Mr. EB Spread (who has to roll separate attacks against each opponent at their full DCV).




buzz, f when i give specifics, as you requested, i get back generalities, this is not going much of anywhere.

I already covered the to hit dealy. I even mentioned only hitting two of the three with the spread... 11 damage to two vs 7 damage to three.

Its nice to just be able to say "its balanced" but that statement needs some backing. I gave you setting. i gave you flavor. i gave you total points. i gave you Rp. i gave you two powers and numbers and we went over the defense and packing thing...

AGAIN, let me ask, if for the 350 game i described two characters came to you which were the same except one had as his attack power the 9d6 Eb firebolt and another the 4 1/2 d6 Eb AOE 2" r fireball what would you tell them?

Do you routinely throw enough tight clusters of nigh defenseless joes with high DCVs to make up for the total ineffectiveness against supers who are at or near the 20 defense range in a 350 pt game? How many scenarios in ten would feature the clusters vs would feature supers with defenses in the 15+ range... really? for a 350 averngers styke game? C'mon?

Its simple to point to a difference and say "its a trade off it will balance".

Ok, maybe this is the wrong tact. Maybe getting you to talk about "your game" or what you would tell players is cutting too close. After all, you did not answer the direct question.

Would these two attack be equally effective against a random sampling, in your opinion, of say 30 published characters (15 from the Champions Universe sourcebook and Champions Genre book and 15 more from the villain book... crooks conquerors and killers say)? Or would you say the typical defense levels shown in those three products would show the 4 1/2 d6 ap attack to be significantly less effective?

This of course assumes you dont want to answer the earlier question. if i am wrong, please, by all means, step up.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 20, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> Yes, you can blame the system instead of the DM or the player. IF you ignore the fact that the DM created a very bad character and the player didn't understand the system well enough to work within the rules or take advantage of what he could actually do vs what he thought the character should be able to do.



Let's review what I said:


			
				mmadsen said:
			
		

> Second, although an experienced gamemaster could have designed a better Spidey clone, I think it is fair to blame the system -- not completely, but to a very large extent -- because that same gamemaster wouldn't have had those problems running another system.



If the same gamemaster and same players would not have had the problem playing a different system, how can I _not_ blame the system?

(I am not arguing that no one could possibly enumerate a character's powers ahead of time, or that no one could possibly recalculate new powers using a VPP in the midst of a game -- or that no one could possibly play a fun game of Champions.)


			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> Incompetence and stupidity have a way of screwing things up irregardless of the situation.



Indeed.


			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> The question you are asking is "Is there a system with a mechanic that could have fixed this situation". And your response seems to be that if there is, then Champions is a horrible system.



I don't recall saying that Champions is a horrible system.  In fact, I've made it quite clear that the Hero system has some excellent elements to it -- but I think it could be streamlined significantly.


			
				Rackhir said:
			
		

> Here you are not only nitpicking, but ignoring most of my arguments and their context to come up with a conclusion that is the anthesis of what I was arguing. You are even ignoring the fact that I stated specifically HOW to do in Champions, exactly what you are complaining Champions doesn't do.



Nitpicking?  "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."

As for the conclusion that is the antithesis of what you were arguing, I guess you don't see my point: you did not succeed in arguing _for_ Hero, but for a system that could handle powers on the fly.  Here's what I said:


			
				mmadsen said:
			
		

> I think you've successfully argued for a system where players can easily think up new uses for old powers, on the fly -- and then use them.



None of your proposed solutions (VPP, MP, EC, limited-use powers) work on the fly -- and comics are full of supers finding clever new uses for their existing powers, on the fly.


----------



## Kannik (Apr 20, 2004)

As feared, this thread is devolving into a set of thinly-veiled pot-shots.  }:/

However, I do want to bring up one clarification/point on the Webby character:  Within the rulebook there is text stating something to the effect of:  "A character can pick up a gun (or any universal focus) and use it, without problem or penalty.  However, if they want to _keep_ this item, they must then pay points for it."  IIRC, there is a similar block of text that describes creative uses of one's power.   It works the same way:  A character can do something nifty with their powers if the GM believes it makes sense;  however, if they want to do it all the time, they should/need to buy the power.  (Otherwise certain FX would be more 'powerful' than others by the virtue of having potentially useful side abilities.)

Of course, that's not to say that if a GM wishes to introduce a Genre or Hero Point mechanic into the game, that it not work (it would probably work very well) and could allow for more frequent 'free' creative uses of powers (along with other nifty effects).

Kannik


----------



## buzz (Apr 21, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> Again, see FRED under extra limbs and you will see how to do it right.



p. 112: "If the Extra Limbs cannot exercise the character's full STR or DEX, the character may take a -1/4 limitation on those Characteristics to reflect that fact."

So, your Brick 3a costs 16pts less, i.e. 189. I'm not sure what you mean by mentioning figured characteristics, as they are not affected by this. How did you come up with 234?


----------



## buzz (Apr 21, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> AGAIN, let me ask, if for the 350 game i described two characters came to you which were the same except one had as his attack power the 9d6 Eb firebolt and another the 4 1/2 d6 Eb AOE 2" r fireball what would you tell them?



I'd ask how they managed to buy a half die of EB, since you can't buy it in less than 1d6 for 5pts.  I'd also ask them why they're deliberately choosing to put their main attack at the bottom of the Active Point range for a Standard superheroic campaign (i.e., it's 40-80) when you're putting the DEF/rDEF at the top (20/10). I'd ask the same of the 9d6 guy.

At the least, I'd say that he'd better save his attack for VIPER agents, on whom it should work pretty well.



			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> This of course assumes you dont want to answer the earlier question. if i am wrong, please, by all means, step up.



More snarkiness. (Do you post as tetsujin over on RPG.net and the HERO boards?) Did HERO shoot your dog or something?

I'm not really sure what you're trying to prove at this point. That I'm somehow deluded and am not really having fun playing HERO? I've already basically answered your questions. Yes, I think the points generally come up balanced. Go ahead and think I'm an idiot if you want to. I'm still going to show up for my Friday night Champs game and have fun.


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 21, 2004)

Just to say this is kind of fascinating to watch. Like praying mantids eating each other or something. It's like those discussions of Mac vs PC in the 80's and 90's.

There's lots of ways of having fun, it seems. And some people sure care about how good their way of having fun is.


----------



## ScottDM (Apr 21, 2004)

I am not a fan of the HERO system. To me it just seems like too much work for too little fun. I must say it is because I played with a rules lawyer GM that I feel this way. The guy remembers all the modifiers in the book, all the "little" rules, and was very anal about the specifics. When I play a game, I do it to have fun. There are so may modifiers for certain instances that its not even funny. I will only go into specifics if someone asks, but I felt like the game was a munchkins dream. A 4D6 killing blast radius NND power for 7 points? Someones done it I'm sure. The game favors people who like to crunch numbers, and that not being something I perticularly enjoy, the game blew monkey chunks. But that is just my opinion. And we all know what thats like.....


----------



## Eosin the Red (Apr 21, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> So to recap, in a nutshell, the essence of the argument so far, the point of it all, is this: HERO is a better system, right? That's what I hear you guys saying.




Don't forget them farmers! We made rude comments about them farmers.




			
				swrushing said:
			
		

> Dig, dig, and more digs




Hey SW,

You know one hell of alot about Hero - not just Hero 5th but in general you know what is said when and where on the Hero Boards. You have spent a hundred + dollars on Hero supplements. You know your rules and even your Steven Long posts inside and out. Why do you devote so much time to something you obviously dislike? I don't like Palladium but I have never been over to their boards or entered a thread with the intent to spend a herculean amount of energy and effort to warn others from the system. 

In places you sound more like a bitter lover who has found their spouce in bed with someone else. What gives? Surely, you don't hate the system that much after all you bought more than one book on it. You hung or still hang out on the Hero Boards. You even still have your books. Has the Hero team done something to personally offend you? 

350 points is just as valid a metric as 10th level, both can be abused and used like a cheap street walker both can also be underpowered wimps. With experienced and nonabusive players in both games you are likely to be equal in terms of balance all things considered.

Attack Powers....not all attack powers are equal, especially at either end of the spectrum. 4d6 RKA/HKA is the most effective attack in the game and a highly advantaged 60 point EB is the weakest attack in the game. Generally speaking, attack powers between 60 and 90 AP should be close to equal - advantages and disadvantages not with standing. You should compare the actual attack power and not the final form [nor the real cost]. 12d6 EB is nearly as effective as 4d6 RKA and these are nearly as effective as 4d6 Major transform or any other power - BUT, once you start adding advantages and disadvantages the point to point value is no longer valid in terms of effectiveness [FREX A 6d6 EB, 0 END, No Range, Affects Desolid - sucks compared to 6d6 EB NND unless you happen to be fighting ghosts at long range an happen to be very tired.]. Those other tricks may come in handy every once in awhile but really are not worth it.

Is EB explosion worth it? I see people who like it, just like I see people who like No END but for me.....Nope, not worth it if I have a hard limit on my AP.

The whole point about the prehensile tail thing in some pretty ugly rules mangling. Quite a loop hole if you ask me and I would disallow the point break on the STR irrespective of what SL says on that....I am a Herophile but I fall way short of the glory of SWrushing when it comes to rules minutia so I don't know if that is actually what the errata says or not...I love hero but I am not obsessed enough to dig that deep. I will assume that your knowledge of Hero is probably superior to mine (I just run the game - I don't hang on each and every ruling on the Hero Boards like you seem to have done) but I will be happy to address specific issues that you have with the game. Although as mentioned, I suspect that you issues are not really with the game....dislike that deep is usually reserved for something personal. 



			
				ScottDM said:
			
		

> The game favors people who like to crunch numbers, and that not being something I perticularly enjoy.




In this respect it is pretty similar to d20 - if you like to crunch and are willing to devote endless hours to it - then you too can reign in the Sultans of Smack. Those who crunch numbers will rule in any math based system be it d20, GURPs, Hero, or Storyteller.


----------



## buzz (Apr 21, 2004)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> There's lots of ways of having fun, it seems. And some people sure care about how good their way of having fun is.



As well as letting other people know, at length, why their way of having fun is wrong.

I thought it was just RPG.net, but I guess it's a universal law that any thread anywhere about HERO needs to devolve at some point into a system debate.  :\


----------



## Driddle (Apr 21, 2004)

I've just decided that GURPS Supers is the superior superhero game engine. The rest of you are full of bologna.


----------



## mmadsen (Apr 21, 2004)

I just read WizarDru's Supers Recommendations: My Choice: M&M (in the d20 Modern, d20 System & OGL Games forum), and he gives a glowing review of M&M -- a well-written, glowing review.

His summary: 







			
				WizarDru said:
			
		

> It's clear that they've learned from other games mistakes, and streamlined quite a bit. M&M feels like d20 pared down, mixed with Hero, acid-washed and then distilled down for speed. It addresses my major problem with Hero, namely number-crunching, but retains the wonderful customization possibilities that Hero provides, for the most part. I'll let you know if I find any further interesting tidbits.


----------



## barsoomcore (Apr 21, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> As well as letting other people know, at length, why their way of having fun is wrong.
> 
> I thought it was just RPG.net, but I guess it's a universal law that any thread anywhere about HERO needs to devolve at some point into a system debate.  :\



 Not so fast!

There exists no internet silliness so extreme that it can't be countered by judicious application of Mary Poppins:





There now. Doesn't everyone feel better?


----------



## swrushing (Apr 21, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> p. 112: "If the Extra Limbs cannot exercise the character's full STR or DEX, the character may take a -1/4 limitation on those Characteristics to reflect that fact."
> 
> So, your Brick 3a costs 16pts less, i.e. 189. I'm not sure what you mean by mentioning figured characteristics, as they are not affected by this. How did you come up with 234?




Ok so at least we are both using the rules!

As i mentioned in the original example, there are two costs, one lower than the 200-205 range and one higher, depending on a subjective GM choice.

Since my guess is we all agree that weak tail brick should point out, by common sense if nothing else, between 200 and 205, then either 16 pts low or 30 some points high are both pretty bad results. Its up to the Gm i guess to figure out whether charging 30 pts too much or saving 16 pts for no reasons is worse.

How did i get to the higher value as a possibility?

Strength and Dex are primary characteristics.
in the weak tail brick, we are applying, per the rule you cited, a -1/4 limitation to these primary characteristics.
HERo pg 92 tells us (second paragraph under "Characteristics")  how to apply 
limitations to primary characteristics and specifically about the figured characteristics.

last sentence reads "if the limitation does not limit the figured characteristics, then the limited primary characteristic does notadd to the figured characteristic..." They then give an example.

"Not usable by tail" (or however you want to name this lim) has no effect whatsoever on speed, stun, recovery, or endurance at all. If your game features hit locations (not the norm for supers games) then it might apply to the PD IF the tail has its own hit locations from a custom designed hit location chart. i am assuming not for this example, sticking with normal rules.

So, in our case, lets look at the strength. The tailless brick and full strength tail brick have  60 strength costing 50 and providing a free 12 PD, 12 of the 18 recovery, and 30 of the 60 stun.

The weak tail brick has 10 real strength and 50 strength with the limitation of "not for the tail" which means the strength only costs him 4- but it only provides him with 2 PD (not 12), 2 of the 18 recovery (not 12), and 5 stun (not 30). Buying back those lost figured characteristics (remember, all three bricks had the same PD, etc...) will run him 10 for the PD, 20 for the recovery and 30ish for the stun (or maybe it was 25 because i think i had sold back 5 stun but oh nevermind) ...

in short, because limiting his strength costs him the figured characteristics, he spends MORE to keep the same stats since he has to buy figured characteristics. 

Then we repeat the process for speed figured from dex and find a few more points...

As i look at it, my math might be off, but its in the ballpark... 

so the final rub is...

if the Gm uses the rules... then either...

weak tail will weigh in some 15 pts cheaper than the brick with identical stats but no tail at all  (assumes Gm elects to not apply the page 90 limited primary characteristcs rule) and be able **by dint of adding a weak tail extra limb which the other guy does not have at all** buy say +3 to hit to "compensate" with his saved points...

 or...

weak tail will weigh in about 25-35 pts more than the guy with the full strength tail.

Now, while Gms may differ on whether overcharging a character 30ish points is worse ot not worse than undercharging  him 15ish... some Gms feel giving the player unwarranted points will create more balance problems than giving them too few...  i prefer to just look at it and say... "its obvious to anyone who did not do the HERo math dance that weak tail should weigh in between strong tail and no tail, so both under by 15ish and over by 30ish are just plain wrong and silly."

In this case, doing the math did indeed as you have said "give us a number", two in fact, but neither was even close to being right.


----------



## drnuncheon (Apr 21, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> I've just decided that GURPS Supers is the superior superhero game engine. The rest of you are full of bologna.



 GURPS Supers?  You poor, poor bastard.

 J
 been there
 has the scars


----------



## Karl Green (Apr 21, 2004)

Rackhir said:
			
		

> You are the first person I've ever seen to argue that HERO system is not suited to running Superheroes. I admire you for being able to type that with a straight face.




Then let me be the second person you hear it from 

I like Hero ok for non-super stuff, but to me (and _only_ IMO) Hero does not do supers well... at all in fact. It is to slow, to many figures that have nothing to do with the "comic" feel. At least not to me. 

Again I like it for other stuff, just not supers...


----------



## swrushing (Apr 21, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'd ask how they managed to buy a half die of EB, since you can't buy it in less than 1d6 for 5pts.



Sigh, that was me trying to stick to your chosen "45 pts". value. Anyway, in 4e at least, it was common enough and published in numerous examples to have a half dice Eb for 3 pts. I really did not take the time to look it up to see if they changed that for 5e. maybe 5e has gone more granular. maybe they found the ability to buy an attack between 4d6 and 5d6 to be unbalancing?

Anyway, the example would work much the same with 4d6 AOE 2" r vs 8d6 eb.

So this seems a little trivial.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'd also ask them why they're deliberately choosing to put their main attack at the bottom of the Active Point range for a Standard superheroic campaign (i.e., it's 40-80) when you're putting the DEF/rDEF at the top (20/10). I'd ask the same of the 9d6 guy.



would the words "character concept" be OK?

besides... the 9d6 guy's attack WOULD BE EFFECTIVE at those values. Against the high end guys he still gets 11 stun thru per attack. Look at my for instance example...

As an example, say he spend shis 45 pts on 9d6 Eb and +3  OCV for a total of 60 pts vs the guy who buys 12d6 Eb.

Assume an opponent of average DCV and the 20 defense

12d6 boy needs a 11- to hit and does 22 stun thru on a hit. Thats gonna average about 14 stun per shot (missing 38% of the time.)

9d6 boy will hit on 14- (because of his three extra ocv) for about 11 making him about 10 stun per shot.

Sure, 9d6 boy has a little less stun against the big boys and 12d6 boy has more of a chance of getting a con stun but he has some better accuracy to help compensate.

besides, it not necessary in order to be worth your points that you build your characters to always be at the high end, right. The low end is listed at 8d6.

But really... the question i am asking is NOT about 45 pts of attack vs 60 pts of attack.

its about 45 pts of attack vs 45 pts of attack.




			
				buzz said:
			
		

> At the least, I'd say that he'd better save his attack for VIPER agents, on whom it should work pretty well.



basic viper agent has 10 def and DCV 5(HERO5 champions universe page 147 )

assuming shooting between 11m and 16m of the agents
assuming a cluster of three viper agents in a 3 hex wide area
assuming neither guy has range skill levels...
Assuming OCV of 8 for the good guysguys.

area guy shoots... hits the hex (DCV 5) and to avoid spread issues i am going to assume he hits automatically...  his average damage is about 7 per viper guy... 21 total stun scores. The crowd goes wild.

firebolt guy shoots... needs a 12- to hit. he spreads to 6d6 to get shots at all three... each hit scores on average 11 stun thru defenses. he hits 75% of the time. thats an average of 8 stun thru per viper guy, ~ 25 per "shot at three".

So, against three  viper guys in a cluster at "medium range", the 9d6 guy spreading does MORE DAMAGE than the area guy on average. If we move closer, to within 8m, the numbers go even more in favor of the 9d6 spread guy.

Again, at best, against clusters of threee Basic Viper agents, at normal distances, the 9d6 guy comes off as good or better than the area guy.

if you add this to "and against real supers with defenses above 10, the 9d6 guy will do much better as the area guy finds his attack becoming unable tp penetrate at all"...

i dont see the balance in effectiveness between those two attacks. 

they are perhaps balanced against clusterred viper guys, but not against more typical supers... which means for the same points area guy will sometimes be on par but other times be much worse off than 9d6 guy.

is that what you call balanced?





			
				buzz said:
			
		

> More snarkiness. (Do you post as tetsujin over on RPG.net and the HERO boards?) Did HERO shoot your dog or something?



No.
No.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I'm not really sure what you're trying to prove at this point. That I'm somehow deluded and am not really having fun playing HERO? I've already basically answered your questions. Yes, I think the points generally come up balanced. Go ahead and think I'm an idiot if you want to. I'm still going to show up for my Friday night Champs game and have fun.




I am trying to challenge the assertions you make about the HERO system, more specifically about the relevence of the points to balance. I am using core rules, the point value your thru out, and SIMNPLE constructs (No NND, AOE only vs desolid faeires nonsense... just a firebolt vs fireball comparison... vanilla) to show its just not true that the points, rp cost in specific,  will even for this simple case mean balance.

This is not really news. like i said, every so often on the HERo boards themselves someone asks about how to judge balance and IIRC no one (or almost no one) says "use total points." You are i think the first hero gamer to let his need to defend the system drive him that far down the road.

In short, in my experience, and using the standard numbers, the 9d6 vs 4.5d6 aoe example is a dead spot on example of hero math failing to produce a balanced set of powers. In any game with a moderate distribution of bad guys, the 9d6 blast will do more damage more often and drop foes faster than the 4.5 d6 aoe because of the gross loss in damage after defensesthe system 'charges" to get a small area of effect.  Frankly, even the viper agent you tossed out still shows the 9d6 guy ahead of the game. 

What i had hoped for was a slightly different outcome. i had hoped for maybe you to say something with a little more consideration than "well i still think its mostly balanced" et al...

For example, a more reasonable response IMo would have been...

"Well, yeah, this example of AOE on the low end of things with normal attacks is an issue. The 4.5 wont play out balanced unless the GM spends a lot of game time with his heroes beating up street thugs. But the AOE value is an approximation. In HERo the same AOE value can apply to drains and NNDs and flashes and a whole slew of other attacks which all beypass standard defenses. For these attacks, the big difference between 4.5 and 9d6 wont be exacerbated by significant defenses. So the AOE value is pretty much balanced along the lines for those attacks and it really doesn't work out as well for standard damage attacks, especially at the low end of the DC range. HERO tends when it errs to err on the side of caution. This may be one such case."

To me, something like the above, is a more informative than just "the points work, its balanced" rote defense. pretending the problems dont exist is not helping to propote the product. 


In my experience, no PC in a game i have run or have been in has taken as his primary attack or sole attack an AOE attack of the standard attack type (Eb or RKA) with AOE at +1. 

In my experience, plenty PCs in games i have run or have been in have take as their primary attack or sole attack a standard attack of the standard attack type (EB or RKA.) More than a few.

Effectiveness vs cost was a noticeable consideration in those cases. They all figured it out. i am surprised you did not.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 21, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Hey SW,



Hi.


			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> You know one hell of alot about Hero - not just Hero 5th but in general you know what is said when and where on the Hero Boards. You have spent a hundred + dollars on Hero supplements. You know your rules and even your Steven Long posts inside and out.



thanks. i try and be informed before i speak... that helps when you get thiungs like the "you did not do it right" rules things we went thru a little while back from the munch fellow. 


			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Why do you devote so much time to something you obviously dislike? I don't like Palladium but I have never been over to their boards or entered a thread with the intent to spend a herculean amount of energy and effort to warn others from the system.
> 
> In places you sound more like a bitter lover who has found their spouce in bed with someone else. What gives? Surely, you don't hate the system that much after all you bought more than one book on it. You hung or still hang out on the Hero Boards. You even still have your books. Has the Hero team done something to personally offend you?



nope. have never met them. While i havent had any interaction with the current guys, i did have published articles with the previous owners (old digital hero) and even have an editorial credit in a hero product (a GRG san angelo thing iirc.)

many of my posts on the hero boards are NOT bashing heor but normal posts about how to do within the system this or that and suggested rules and the like. i certainly dont shirk from criticizing it when i feel apropriate.


			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> 350 points is just as valid a metric as 10th level, both can be abused and used like a cheap street walker both can also be underpowered wimps. With experienced and nonabusive players in both games you are likely to be equal in terms of balance all things considered.



thats very broad. Like i said, a penny and a 20 dollar bill can both be called money.

there is a much large "balance gap" between 350 pts and 10th level between an inexperienced hero guy and an experienced hero guy than there is between the same in D20, or maybe DnD as i cannot speak to every thidr party d20 product. if you stick with core rules for both (HERO5 rulebook and PHB DMG for DND) to keep it simple, i think this is even more pronounced.


[UOTE=Eosin the Red]
Attack Powers....not all attack powers are equal, especially at either end of the spectrum. 4d6 RKA/HKA is the most effective attack in the game and a highly advantaged 60 point EB is the weakest attack in the game.
[/QUOTE]
Uh... i would have to say both of those are dubious statements at best. The value of the RKA is really dependent on the body levels and resistant defenses and style of the campaign. if the campaign features a moderate amount of agents, the rka will be killing some, or at least leaving them dieing, and will cause significant problems and a 12d6 eb will be just as effective at dropping them without killing.

the highly advantaged eb is actually one of the more abusive hero constructs. Its nicknamed "super baby powers" around here. take a 1-2 d6 Eb and advantage the sucker up to 60 ap with things which enable you to avoid primary defenses and you can have a real whammo thing. 

They key is simple, the area advanatage is so expensive it makes any attack which goes against normal defenses less than worthwhile for its cost. So, an inexperienced guy might well buy a fireball and not realize he has just screwed himself.

An experienced guy however knows that multiple advantages stack well and so he will get the area attack but ALSO know to take another advantage to get around defenses, bypassing the whole "normal defense" issue. 

For example, going back to my and buzz's 9d6 eb vs 4.5 d6 firebolt... 
what if savvy joe bought instead a 3d6 NND AOE attack for also 45 pts. 

exact same price as the other two.

But more...

3d6 nnd aoe is 3" radius... not 2" radius but 3" radius... that means 19 hexes not 7. 

against some supers, those with the defenses, this attack would be of no use.
for sake of argument lets pick one of their common cases... force field.

against everyone else... bricks, viper agents, martial artists, etc... this attack hits everyone in a 3" radius, does about 10 stun thru and is practically an autohit.

now, when compared to the 4.5 d6 dude, this is, IMO, clearly very superior. Bigger area, more damage even against viper agents, and the ability to damage even supers of higher defense. heck, since force fields typically are visible, you will rarely be unaware of who is and who is not immune. 

MOREOVER... odds are anyone with a force field is not a 10 defense total guy and the 4.5 d6 guy wont be getting any stun thru anyway.

Whwther its better to do 3d6 avoiding defenses or 9d6 before defenses is more iffy. it is at least as good in many cases. Against a low defense single bad guy scenario, the 9d6 wins and the 9d6 is a little more versatile. 




			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Generally speaking, attack powers between 60 and 90 AP should be close to equal - advantages and disadvantages not with standing. You should compare the actual attack power and not the final form [nor the real cost]. 12d6 EB is nearly as effective as 4d6 RKA and these are nearly as effective as 4d6 Major transform or any other power - BUT, once you start adding advantages and disadvantages the point to point value is no longer valid in terms of effectiveness [FREX A 6d6 EB, 0 END, No Range, Affects Desolid - sucks compared to 6d6 EB NND unless you happen to be fighting ghosts at long range an happen to be very tired.]. Those other tricks may come in handy every once in awhile but really are not worth it.



In short, total points, real points, is not a good benchmark for power or effectiveness or balance.

I agree. Every experienced hero guy i have ever known agrees. Guys over at the hero boards agree.

buzz seems to be the lone holdout. go figure


			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Is EB explosion worth it? I see people who like it, just like I see people who like No END but for me.....Nope, not worth it if I have a hard limit on my AP.
> 
> The whole point about the prehensile tail thing in some pretty ugly rules mangling. Quite a loop hole if you ask me and I would disallow the point break on the STR irrespective of what SL says on that....I am a Herophile but I fall way short of the glory of SWrushing when it comes to rules minutia so I don't know if that is actually what the errata says or not...



it is the rules. no errata to change it. i tried. believe me, i tried.

its a simple issue hero has thats at fault. i call it "buy low, sell high".

it works like this... buying a cheap thing (extra limb in this case) enables you to put a small limit on a much much larger thing (characteristics in this case) and so adding a flawed little thing (weak extra tail) enables you to LOWER your overall cost. Now, in this particular case, the figured characteristics rule steps in if the Gm wants and crushes the whole thing to the other extreme, making it cost more. Both are just plain wrong.

you can get the same effect with partial coverage rules for bases where by making your base larger you can actually reduce the cost of the total base.

A correct rule would ALWAYS make the limit apply to the smaller item... so a weak tail SHOULD (but doesn't) reduce the extra lim cost and partial coverage should apply to the parts of the base that DONT have coverage.

but thats not the rule and was not accepted by long when questioned. his final answer was iirc "dont use our rules if you dont like them." or somesuch.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> I love hero but I am not obsessed enough to dig that deep. I will assume that your knowledge of Hero is probably superior to mine (I just run the game - I don't hang on each and every ruling on the Hero Boards like you seem to have done) but I will be happy to address specific issues that you have with the game. Although as mentioned, I suspect that you issues are not really with the game....dislike that deep is usually reserved for something personal.



no, nothing personal. i am talking about the game. i find it a lot better than talking about me. sorry if that dissapoints.


----------



## buzz (Apr 21, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> This is not really news. like i said, every so often on the HERo boards themselves someone asks about how to judge balance and IIRC no one (or almost no one) says "use total points." You are i think the first hero gamer to let his need to defend the system drive him that far down the road.
> ...
> To me, something like the above, is a more informative than just "the points work, its balanced" rote defense. pretending the problems dont exist is not helping to propote the product.
> ...
> Effectiveness vs cost was a noticeable consideration in those cases. They all figured it out. i am surprised you did not.



FWIW, I appreicated your snark-free post explaining the brick/extra limb conundrum. Looks like there was a big discussion about this on the HERO boards just last year. I was sad to see your above post, though, as you once again seem determined to run this discussion into an argument.

I never claimed that HERO was perfect. On the contrary, my position began as a refutation of your initial post, i.e., a) that it's simply not as flawed as you're making it out to be, and 2) the system of points is just as valuable as levels are in D&D, and not a bunch of "wasted time doing math." I did not say that point totals are *always* a perfect (and the only) measure of balance, but rather (and repeatedly) that, *in general* they serve said purpose, and I would indeed bet on this. I think the mere fact that you are able to conduct your critical analyses demonstrates my point. Even if the end result leads you to think, "Hey, this is kind of under/overpowered for that amount of points," it's at least told you *something*. I don't find my judgement nearly as reliable with D&D. Granted, I've been playing HERO a lot longer...

More importantly, the HERO point-build system comprises a toolkit that I find very useful, very fun, and, IMO, more workable for me than the, to me, more subjective process of designing things from scratch in most d20 games --D&D in particular. I don't find the math "wasted" time. Actually, I find it quite enjoyable, to the point where I look forward to, say, shuffling points around to better build a PC. OTOH, I have yet to find myself wanting to sit down and create new D&D spells or feats (though I certianly do like messing around with the material I already have).

If you find this a "rote defense," I'll say this: I didn't realize that I needed to prepare myself to be "rote attacked." I find it unfortunate that merely advocating HERO on gaming forums seems to invite extended criticism that assumes advocacy equals blind zealotry.

I also hope that the devolvement of this thread (I know, I helped) hasn't put off its author from giving HERO a test-drive.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 22, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I never claimed that HERO was perfect. On the contrary, my position began as a refutation of your initial post, i.e., a) that it's simply not as flawed as you're making it out to be, and 2) the system of points is just as valuable as levels are in D&D, and not a bunch of "wasted time doing math."



Actually didn't you say the hero math did a lot of the work for you, while DND levels only allowed you to do comparison by example?

I think it was specifically on for instance magic...



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> With D&D, all you really have to go on is example...
> 
> With HERO, though, at least there's a baseline, *and the math does most of the work for you. *




honestly, if your position now is that all hero's math gets you to as good as levels at assessing balance... well then i must ask, why did you need to do all that math? 



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I did not say that point totals are *always* a perfect (and the only) measure of balance, but rather (and repeatedly) that, *in general* they serve said purpose, and I would indeed bet on this. I think the mere fact that you are able to conduct your critical analyses demonstrates my point. Even if the end result leads you to think, "Hey, this is kind of under/overpowered for that amount of points," it's at least told you *something*.



buzz, please go back and look at all my analysis... when i did the analysis of 4.5 d6 aoe 2" r fireball and 9d6 firebolt, when i threw average damages, spread to 3 hexes across, viper agents defense from champions, etc etc etc etc and finally came to the conclusion that "the aoe is too weal by comparison" the number "45" played no role.

had i stated "9d6 firebolt and 4.5 d6 fireball cost 74 pts" the final analysis and comparison would have been the same. 

the fact that i did some hero math to arrive at 45 before i compared the powers for EFFEXCT and RESULTSm had no bearing whatsoever on the analysis and conclusion of that analysis for EFFECT and RESULT.

When asnwering the question of "what fireball would be equivalent in effect and result to a 9d6 firebolt?" all the hero math did is get me started at the wrong place...4.5 d6.

I could have done that without the math up front. 

eyeballing it, i would have started with 6d6 and a 3" AOE (in HERO speak making AOE radius a +1/2 advantage for normal defense powers.)

Analyzing 6d6 3"r vs 9d6 bolt it looks a lot closer balanced with tangible advantages and disadvantages to both. The 9d6 can no longer spread to the full width without doing LESS damage than the area and both will do at least some damage on average to the top end defense supers.



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> I don't find my judgement nearly as reliable with D&D. Granted, I've been playing HERO a lot longer...



I will agree wholeheartedly that the more experienced a Gm is with a system the more easily he will find balance designing for it. I just think its a matter of experience, not the math.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> Actually, I find it quite enjoyable, to the point where I look forward to, say, shuffling points around to better build a PC.



mosyt of the hero players who like hero i knopw personally list chargen, building characters, squeaking out points, as the most fun. i have spent many an enjoyable time doing so myself. i like crunching numbers... whether its hero characters, designing classes, building gothic fleets or star fleet battles task forces, etc. give me a complex "build your assault unit" point scheme and i usually will be entertained for a while.

and other times, i want to playong or running  rpgs.


			
				buzz said:
			
		

> If you find this a "rote defense," I'll say this: I didn't realize that I needed to prepare myself to be "rote attacked." I find it unfortunate that merely advocating HERO on gaming forums seems to invite extended criticism that assumes advocacy equals blind zealotry.




If i were to make claims that were inaccurate about DND or stargate or any other rpg on a thread asking about that rpg, i would expect someone with kjnowledg to step in and challenge those assertions. i would hope they did so with good knowledge of the system, examples from the system, and so forth.

if that happened, i would not bemoan the fact that it happened.

the fireball vs firebolt example was chosen to emphasiuze a point... its not just oddball wierd niches of the genre that hero math falls down on. this wasn't super baby powers exploited meson burst pulsars (eb nnd aoe autofire) some savvy guru would whip out to try and pass by a snoozing gm... this was as simple as fireball vs firebolt. 

if it doesn't get the simple math right, the stuff a novice might try thinking it will be fine, why would we assume it gets the less obvious stuff right.

even eosin decided to, instead of just saying "yeah its balanced", discuss how once advntages start getting applied, cost does not relate to power well.

The hero math to arrive at cost does not help with the effect & result (enr) that a decent gm will do to determine balance. The enr still needs to be done. people at the hero boards admit this and start talking combat values, average stun, chances to hit just like DND people do who never used the hero math.

if the hero math starts you off at a wrong result, like it pointed me to 4.5 d6 instead of 6d6, it doesn't help at all and may even hurt.

more importantly, if the hero math gets accepted as sufficient proof of balance, if one actually believes the point value is an accurate measure and thus takes it over ot in place of doing the enr, then it really does hurt you.

Someone even a little sane, not using hero math, using just his own experience and judgement, would never say...
1. weak tail should be either more expensive than full tail OR less expensive than no tail.
2. a smaller base should be MORE expensive than a larger base with everything the smaller base has and more.
3. a character who is a billionaire playboy scientist shapeshifter with (several bases and a jet plane) who can also assume the exact form, skills, and powers of each of his 350 pt partners is also a 350 pot character.

All thre FRED, you want page numbers, or have i earned enough bonafides now that we dont need to take the time to show the math?

I submit that the initial gut reaction to each of those by anyone starting from eyeball would be "no"... but those starting with hero math would be starting with "yes". 

That math up front took some time and did not help them one bit. Arguably, if they pay heed to ot and try to "prove it was right" as opposed to going with the obvious conclusions... it hurts them.

if they are so faithfuol as to not even want to pay attention to the enr or not do it and just accept "its generally right" and move on, it hurts them a lot.



			
				buzz said:
			
		

> With HERO, though, at least there's a baseline, *and the math does most of the work for you. *




emphasis mine.


----------



## Dogbrain (Apr 22, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> By the way, is there any rationale for CV being based on Dex/3 rather than Dex/5?




Less granular.  The difference between DEX 10 and DEX 30 is 7 CV rather than 4 CV.


----------



## isidorus (Apr 22, 2004)

> buzz
> I also hope that the devolvement of this thread (I know, I helped) hasn't put off its author from giving HERO a test-drive.




Nope he is already on the Hero Boards  

What I find amazingly funny about every discussion on Hero is how long the thread goes on. To tell you the Truth it was one of these threads that turned me onto Hero, is that wierd or what.  I am gald of the threads though at least I found Hero was alive and Kicking. 

Taking a little bit to get back in the groove but the it has been 20 years since I played Champions.


----------



## PCD (Apr 22, 2004)

It was this very detailed, passionate discussion that inpsired me.  For D20/D&D/Modern..."I've lost that loving feeling"...laffs.  Any game that inspires this much discussion is worth looking into.  I did and HERO won me over.  I already miss my book.  It sits at home, on a shelf...all alone.  laffs.


----------



## proditor (Apr 22, 2004)

Welcome to the cult PCD.    I've been playing D&D for nigh on 26 years now.  Wait...let me amend that.  I played D&D for almost 26 years.  I stopped playing about 6 months ago.  It wasn't that I bought HERO, saw the light and converted like a zealot, no, I've been playing Hero based games for almost 20 years.  What did it was simple things like spending three times as long creating a mid-level d20 PC as I was spending on a 350 point PC.  The level system had become so class dependent, PRC dependent, feat dependent...too many books, too much outlay of cash.  Yes, I could be just a player for 20 bucks if I only bought the PHB.  I could also be just a player in Hero for 10 bucks if I buy Sidekick...

Anyway...The amount of nitpicking and feat selection and skill raise work to qualify for this class at 7th, then this one at 9th...it was exhausting.  I am by nature a tinkerer.  I want an effective character that allows me to RP the personality I designed for that PC.  Doing that in d20 has become a nightmare for me.  I mean, come on now...I take one level of one prc (War priest?) and I get Mettle which is evasion for all my saves.  But I already had the right combos to get normal evasion and will evasion, so now I have evasion for everything, and I have tons of PRCs in dribs and drabs attached to my core classes since they won't get me the earned XP penalty.  UGH!  I loved the idea of PRC's when they first came out.  I loathe them now.  And to the guy who says that the rules for character creation and balance are in the DMG...then why didn't WotC follow them?!?!?  There's a great thread on the WotC boards http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142565&perpage=30 that shows you how to make a character that does something like MILLIONS of d6 damage per attack with a completely legal, WotC approved PC.  THIS is balance????

I retired D&D shortly after 3.5 came out, mostly due to Sean K Reynolds and Monte Cook mentioning that 4.0 was due out in 2 years.  Fool me once (3.5 after 2 years), shame on me.  Fool me twice...

At this point, I'm mostly just angry that WotC managed to kill my longest running pass time.

If you like d20 better, bully for you.  If you like HERO better, bully for you.  They both have problems, but at least I can accept Hero's and not feel that things are completely out of whack.


----------



## Sir Whiskers (Apr 22, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> By the way, is there any rationale for CV being based on Dex/3 rather than Dex/5?




I'll agree with others who've said that it scales better (given the bell curve used by Hero for attacks). Also, if this ratio was changed, you'd have to adjust all the combat skill costs, or it would be a no-brainer to buy a low dex and lots of skills. As with so many things in Hero, changing one element ripples through the entire system.


----------



## Sir Whiskers (Apr 22, 2004)

SWD:

No offense (I mean that), but you seem to be attacking straw-men. I've read the entire thread, and the only person stating the assertion that total points is a perfect measure for comparing the effectiveness of powers is...you (as you then proceed to demolish that assertion). No one who has any experience with the system thinks that simply comparing points is enough. Buzz sure hasn't said that.

What was said is that the math within the system does *most* of the work. If you want to quibble with the word "most", go ahead. But I really don't think anyone is disagreeing with your main point: that there are better and worse builds, using identical points. Of course. For many players, myself included, that's part of the fun of the system - figuring out how to create an effective character, while still making one that's fun to play. But just as levels are a D&D standard for comparing approximate ability, so are total points - an approximation which can be useful (just not perfect).

As for the player who "hoses" himself by designing a character with an AoE attack as his main power, well that's what GM's are for. The fact that a newbie is able to design an ineffective character isn't unique to Hero, just more likely given "all the math" in the system. In Hero, a GM must pay careful attention to all character designs, not just to stop the experienced guys from breaking the system, but also to help the newbies design effective characters.  

BTW, I design AoE attacks all the time. No, they're not the typically the character's main attack, but in some encounters they get used more than any other attack power - versus groups, versus speedsters or high-dex opponents, and so on. And an AoE entangle can be devasting in setting up my team members to take down the bad guys. Circumstances matter. No one build is optimal in all situations. Which is why I love this system.


----------



## swrushing (Apr 22, 2004)

[/QUOTE]



			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> No offense (I mean that), but you seem to be attacking straw-men.



nope. i am attacking claims and using examples.


			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> I've read the entire thread, and the only person stating the assertion that total points is a perfect measure for comparing the effectiveness of powers is...you (as you then proceed to demolish that assertion).



Where did i make that assertion? No offense but i really dont recall it.

i thought i was countering an assertion that in hero cost was a good metric for balance, specifically that if two powers or characters had the same cost within a given setting then they would "generally" be balanced.

Yo counter this, i have pointed oot some obvious errors in the hero costing and we had the big aoe vs regular debate. 

buzz, differs apparently fdrom me, you and eosin in that he seems to feel final cost is "generally"  a metric for balance, while we all seem to feel analysis beyond cost is required.

i did not ask for perfect. 

how many examples do i need to post before the notion that maybe "generally" or "most of the time" are not accurate to describe the relationship between total cost and equivalent or balanced or equally effective is even considered? 

How many casaes of "not in this case" need be profferred before those CLAIMING a thing can actually have their claim be questioned?





			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> No one who has any experience with the system thinks that simply comparing points is enough. Buzz sure hasn't said that.



buzz said total cost was enough for him to bet on. he said it was enough for it to be generally the case.

neither he nor i are talking perfect. 



			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> What was said is that the math within the system does *most* of the work. If you want to quibble with the word "most", go ahead.



i am quibbling with the assertion that "generally" the total cost in hero will give you balance determination. That two powers of 45 pts will generally be balanced within the same setting.




			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> But I really don't think anyone is disagreeing with your main point: that there are better and worse builds, using identical points.



it seems there is some disagreement on that point. 


			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> Of course. For many players, myself included, that's part of the fun of the system - figuring out how to create an effective character, while still making one that's fun to play. But just as levels are a D&D standard for comparing approximate ability, so are total points - an approximation which can be useful (just not perfect).



Again, the claim seems to be that the total cost offers more than levels in this regard... that unlike levels it does most of the work for you. 

if buzz wants to switch over to total cost being only as good as dnd levels, that for both cases, the real test is the comparitive one, i will not disagree at all. 

reiterating my position... whether its DND or hero or MNM or gurps traveller, the useful informative that is necessary for assessing balance comes from comparisons of things based on effect and result. Neither total points or levels tells you any more, except that levels in some contexts presume collections of like things and standards... you know a 10th level character will have more hit points and better saves than a 2nd level one for instance but do not know whether a 350 character will have more stun or DCV than a 100 pt one.

if the above is the case, an agreeable position, thats fine. But then the obvious question arises. Why do all the up front math in HERo if it gets us to the same point, where we now need to do the EnR to determine effectiveness? What did the math get us? What did the extra work net us?

The answer seems to be... fun for those who like doing the math.


			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> As for the player who "hoses" himself by designing a character with an AoE attack as his main power, well that's what GM's are for. The fact that a newbie is able to design an ineffective character isn't unique to Hero, just more likely given "all the math" in the system. In Hero, a GM must pay careful attention to all character designs, not just to stop the experienced guys from breaking the system, but also to help the newbies design effective characters.



forest & trees.

normal area attacks, as opposed to the area drains and nnds which populate hero so much, are a staple of many genres. if thats a case where hero... "ehh well... this is not one of the cases where it generally works" yet it is a reasonably represented power, then the question of how "generally" the cost matches balance arises. 

egads, thats ugly.




			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> BTW, I design AoE attacks all the time. No, they're not the typically the character's main attack, but in some encounters they get used more than any other attack power - versus groups, versus speedsters or high-dex opponents, and so on. And an AoE entangle can be devasting in setting up my team members to take down the bad guys. Circumstances matter. No one build is optimal in all situations. Which is why I love this system.




yes, as stated earlier.. AOE on attacks in hero that bypass defenses are quite cost effective. Experienced hero player get that.

How often do you find area attacks of say EB without nnd and so forth of similar point totals to be as effective as your defense bypassing AOE entangle?

rather infrequently would you say?

but, do you agree, would you bet that, sight unseen, two 45 pt powers would be balanced?

or would you want to see the powers, run some analysis, before you put your money down?


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 22, 2004)

SWRushing said:
			
		

> i am talking about the game. i find it a lot better than talking about me. sorry if that dissapoints.




Sorry, that it disappoints but it does bear some on the case. You have published for Hero system, you have played the system through several incarnations and know minutia about the system YET your tone and tenor indicate that you hate it. There is some kind of disparity here and it relates directly to the amount of venom in many of your posts.

I always wonder about "bashers." Some weird thing that makes me wonder why someone could be so into a system [books or movies] for years then turn all of that joy and fun into a personal crusade to make sure that no good word about it goes unpunished. It is something like the disgruntled former employee - I understand that they cause more financial loss than crime each year. You are former employee of sorts - you did publish with the hero system, get editing credits, and you are assuredly disgruntled. Before you start smoking a system on a public forum, I suspect that proper decorum would require that you mention, "Oh, by the way...I worked with Hero Games on a few projects and here is why I hate it." Without the knowledge that you worked with Hero, you are being disingenuous with your opinion. Here is what Monte Cook does when talking about WotC – first he identifies himself as a former employee – even though you have to be deaf, blind and dumb not to know this. 

ARCHIVED TOPIC: 
[ Line of Sight ]
DATE: July 3, 2002
By Monte Cook
More Wacky Wizards Hijinks
Okay, let me start by saying that those of you tired of my armchair quarterbacking Wizards of the Coast should probably click on another link on the left (the Ptolus story is interesting this week), because I'm doing it again. You might think, "Oh, it's just because he left the company, now he sits back and second-guesses them," but you'd be wrong -- I did it all the time while I worked there, too. 

Now, re-reading your post I am less sure if the tone and ‘tude are directed at Buzz or Hero in general. It might help for you to clarify some or not.

I think that we can both agree that specific examples will get us no where in system comparison – I can identify instances where Hero & d20 both break. You see an overall trend in Hero with 350 [and probably 250 and 150 point] characters being unequal without lots of DM supervision thus negating the reason for the numbers in the first place. I disagree, no where in Hero or d20 does it mention that you should build a character in a vacuum. I have read the Sultans of Smack and seen the grossness that is a charging paladin with rhino hide armor and other goodies leveling 2,000+ points on his charge on average. I have also seen characters built with Ranged Perception levels, Find Weakness, AF, AP, Penetrating…..Or NND, AF, Damage Shields. People can break the systems. I suspect that deep in our respective hearts we all know that.



			
				SWRushing said:
			
		

> Uh... i would have to say both of those are dubious statements at best. The value of the RKA is really dependent on the body levels and resistant defenses and style of the campaign. if the campaign features a moderate amount of agents, the rka will be killing some, or at least leaving them dieing, and will cause significant problems and a 12d6 eb will be just as effective at dropping them without killing.




Now, to those attack powers 4d6 RKA ---- 14 Body Average – 12d6 EB = 12 Body average. I want the 14 Body but that is me. If I had a CAK, I would step off the RKA and try the EB but in terms of effectiveness --- the KA is superior even if you play “STUN loto” to steal an over used phrase. You are reading campaign specific roleplaying penalties into your effectiveness. I am saying RKA does slightly more BODY than EB and is slightly more effective.

In either event, most attack powers bought strait up are close to equal. You choose to make a cool highly advantaged power and then call it “more effective” but I disagree. First, like I have said – points are only a measure of the base powers effectiveness. Once you start adding advantages or disadvantages, it is no longer an effective gauge of power. You could however add the same advantages and limitation to different attack powers and they *should* be roughly equal barring some hiccups [A AP RKA is roughly as effective as an AP EB or an AP Ego Attack]. Compare apples to apples and the numbers turn out much nicer, not perfect just nicer.

“Buy low and Sell High” = Nerfed in my game. Just like I nerfed Harm's no save in 3E. All systems need the DM to use some form of common sense be that d20, Hero, Tristat, or GURPs..

Anyhow, I am done here. Your Debate FU is strong and mine has grown weak and feeble. More importantly, I have things I would much rather be doing than arguing minutia with you (and others). All games appeal to certain crowds and it is likely that players and GMS will find themselves drawn to different games at different stages of their gaming career. Just because a person no longer likes a game (or movie or book) they should not feel inspired to ensure that no one else enjoys it also. I am happy that some folks like Tristat and Storyteller and Palladium. I feel no need to go tell them that their game sucks [those games used above are only examples]. I hope that you have a blast playing MNM [or what ever you play] this weekend; I hope to give it a run someday pretty soon to see how it runs.


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## Eosin the Red (Apr 22, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> I've just decided that GURPS Supers is the superior superhero game engine. The rest of you are full of bologna.




You are not even a bad troll. I did enjoy the tirade about farmers but please, do not let my opinion stop the inane comments. 

BTW - GURPs is a pretty good system - there is a big thread about how many Hero folks (and d20 folks I suspect) buy GURPS stuff cause it is so well done and researched.


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## mmadsen (Apr 22, 2004)

Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> I'll agree with others who've said that it scales better (given the bell curve used by Hero for attacks).



If Dex/3 scales better, then why don't _all_ skills use Stat/3 (rather than Stat/5)?


			
				Sir Whiskers said:
			
		

> Also, if this ratio was changed, you'd have to adjust all the combat skill costs, or it would be a no-brainer to buy a low dex and lots of skills.



If you note how many characters have superhuman Dex -- without it being part of their conception -- then you might agree that Dex is too good for the point cost.


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## swrushing (Apr 22, 2004)

[/QUOTE]




			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Sorry, that it disappoints but it does bear some on the case. You have...



snipping the long section about you thoughts about me and criminally inclined former employees...

I can say "wow"... you sure have spent a lot more time working on the psychology of people who you dont know than i have.

All i can do is say again...
i have no ill will or disgruntled employeeisms with HERo games, GRG, and so forth. There was no bitter employee-employer parting of the ways and, frankly, since i was never "hired" or "paid" by hero games (and never applied for any jobs with them) i really don't think references to criminally inclined former employees has relevence.

My issues are with the claims made about the game system that i find inaccurate, based on my experience.

let me repeat that... i am talking about the system.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Now, re-reading your post I am less sure if the tone and ‘tude are directed at Buzz or Hero in general. It might help for you to clarify some or not.



my posts are  about the system and more specifically certain claims being made about the system. nothing more, nothing less.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> I think that we can both agree that specific examples will get us no where in system comparison – I can identify instances where Hero & d20 both break.



Uh... OK, are you of the opinion that I am trying to show DnD is "more balanced" than hero? Because i am not. This isn't a "my game is less broken than yours" thing, at least, not for me.

But, on a more interesting note, if specific examples won't get us anywhere in evaluating claims about a system as accurate or inaccurate, what would? Should any claim just be accepted as gospel?

I always thought specific examples of system use, correctly using the system rules, were good places to start when analyzing claims.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> You see an overall trend in Hero with 350 [and probably 250 and 150 point] characters being unequal without lots of DM supervision thus negating the reason for the numbers in the first place.



I see little or no relation between total cost and actual effectiveness or balance. I find the mathematic model to be flawed and feel, based on my experience, that the cases where the two do match up to ne more coincidental than to be evidence of accurate accounting. i find the downsides of the complex up front math for the rpg to outweigh the upsides.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> I disagree, no where in Hero or d20 does it mention that you should build a character in a vacuum.



nor do i. hence the use of published settings, standards and characters as part of the examples, when necessary.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> I have read the Sultans of Smack and seen the grossness that is a charging paladin with rhino hide armor and other goodies leveling 2,000+ points on his charge on average. I have also seen characters built with Ranged Perception levels, Find Weakness, AF, AP, Penetrating…..Or NND, AF, Damage Shields. People can break the systems. I suspect that deep in our respective hearts we all know that.



and this would be great if my posts had been all about complex munchkin tweaks for excess power... but they were not. Certainly, as i pointed out, the area effect thing was simple, regular power builds in the genre... fire blast vs fire ball and such. the weak tail produced a bigger overpriced error than a lower priced on and i said both were equally bad. Multiform is straight out of the book. 

In short, since you want to use DND as a comparison, this isn't like i am touting out examples of munchkinized multiclassed thru four PrC classes and finding discrepancies... its like i am touting out mid level fighters or low level clerics. 



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> Now, to those attack powers 4d6 RKA ---- 14 Body Average – 12d6 EB = 12 Body average. I want the 14 Body but that is me.



IMX, 90% of the characters drop in superhero fights in champions due to stun, so stun vs body, i tend to favor stun. Now, of course, there is a very good argument to show that "after defenses" the stun lotto will get you more stun thru against high defenses, making the RKA in those cases the better attack for both stun and body. So i can see your point.

But, IMX, for supers campaigns, there are plenty of (remember, not in a vacuum) downsides to killing attacks... the chance of killing... that serve as a detractor. These of course will vary from campaign to campaign.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> If I had a CAK, I would step off the RKA and try the EB but in terms of effectiveness --- the KA is superior even if you play “STUN loto” to steal an over used phrase. You are reading campaign specific roleplaying penalties into your effectiveness. I am saying RKA does slightly more BODY than EB and is slightly more effective.



and i would argue that would be true or not depending on the campaign influences and genre for the game. You, I and buzz all agree, setting matters.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> In either event, most attack powers bought strait up are close to equal. You choose to make a cool highly advantaged power and then call it “more effective” but I disagree. First, like I have said – points are only a measure of the base powers effectiveness. Once you start adding advantages or disadvantages, it is no longer an effective gauge of power.



given the number of powers that are bought with advantages or limitations or other cost modifiers as opposed to the number of powers bought straight up at full price... thats like saying " Dnd classes are balanced except for once you include attack bonus, saves and feats."

Easily half the powers actually bought for hero characters IMX are not bought without advantages, limitations or other cost adjusting elements. If we are to discount those when assessing how often it works out right... 

well, lets put it this way...

if we discount all the cases where it doesn't work right, toss out all those specific examples to the contrary, then HERO is 100% accurate all the time.



			
				Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> “Buy low and Sell High” = Nerfed in my game. Just like I nerfed Harm's no save in 3E. All systems need the DM to use some form of common sense be that d20, Hero, Tristat, or GURPs..



HERo works better when you dont use the parts that dont work.


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## swrushing (Apr 22, 2004)

Eosin the Red said:
			
		

> BTW - GURPs is a pretty good system - there is a big thread about how many Hero folks (and d20 folks I suspect) buy GURPS stuff cause it is so well done and researched.




Count me in. i have many a gurps supplement and never bought the game itself. They just put too much useful stuff in those supplements to let the game stop me from plumbing them.


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## buzz (Apr 22, 2004)

mmadsen said:
			
		

> If Dex/3 scales better, then why don't _all_ skills use Stat/3 (rather than Stat/5)?



I think it's becasue skills and attacks don't work exactly the same. Attacks use 11 + OCV - DCV, while skills (and characteristic rolls) use 9 + CHR/5. If they worked the same way, I'd imagine they use the same divisor.

I'm not the math whiz swrushing is  , but I think that if skills used Stat/3, they'd progress into mastery too quickly, given the scale used by HERO stats and the 3d6 bell curve. It'd overvalue the stat in the skill equation (the "GURPS effect").


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## drnuncheon (Apr 22, 2004)

swrushing said:
			
		

> Count me in. i have many a gurps supplement and never bought the game itself. They just put too much useful stuff in those supplements to let the game stop me from plumbing them.



 Oh, GURPS is a great system, no doubt, and the supplements are even better.

 GURPS Supers, specifically, though...

 J


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## ScottDM (Apr 22, 2004)

What about Villains and Vigilantes? I loved that game.


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## PCD (Apr 24, 2004)

Been reading my HERO book in more depth.  Damn, there is a lot to it!  I am finding that since it is a totally new system (to me) that it is a fun read.  I use the glossary and index a lot...there are so many abbreviations!!!


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## collin (Apr 24, 2004)

*V and V*



			
				ScottDM said:
			
		

> What about Villains and Vigilantes? I loved that game.



I liked the modules better than what HERO would publish for Champions (e.g. Dr. Apokalyps island vs. Dr. Destroyer) but I found the game system suffered from the very thing I hated about most role-playing games, and that is that there was TOO much randomness to it.  I prefer to create a character I know that I want to play rather than hoping it will turn out like I want.


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## Endur (Apr 24, 2004)

For super-heroes, Hero (i.e. Champions) is the best game system, period.  Champions totally destroys the DC and Marvel super-hero games, Villians & Vigilantes, all of the D20 supers, and any other game system that uses super heroes (except maybe GURPS which I have not played or read).

I have several of the other Hero System products (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Espionage), but have not played them enough to comment on them.  My feeling is that the Hero system is best for Super-heroes (for which it was originally designed) and is too complex for fantasy or non-superpowered games.

I think D&D is the best fantasy game.  Champions is the best super game.  Not sure what the best sci-fi game is, maybe Traveller.


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## mmadsen (Apr 24, 2004)

Endur said:
			
		

> For super-heroes, Hero (i.e. Champions) is the best game system, period.  Champions totally destroys the DC and Marvel super-hero games, Villians & Vigilantes, all of the D20 supers, and any other game system that uses super heroes (except maybe GURPS which I have not played or read).



Well, I'm glad you cleared that up!


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## buzz (Apr 30, 2004)

FYI, here's a nifty essay countering the claim that HERO stats are too granular.

http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/herosystem/essays/breakpoints.html


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## drnuncheon (Apr 30, 2004)

Endur said:
			
		

> For super-heroes, Hero (i.e. Champions) is the best game system, period. Champions totally destroys...all of the D20 supers, and any other game system that uses super heroes (except maybe GURPS which I have not played or read).



 Well, it definitely destroys GURPS, but IMO Mutants & Masterminds gives it an exceptionally strong run for its money - it's got a similar level of flexibility in terms of what you can do with powers, and has the advantage of being a lot faster to run, at least from my brief experience with M&M and long experience with HERO.

 J


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## buzz (Apr 30, 2004)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> [M&M has] a similar level of flexibility in terms of what you can do with powers, and has the advantage of being a lot faster to run, at least from my brief experience with M&M and long experience with HERO.



I chalk it up to newbie ineptitude, but I found that the M&M games my group ran felt a lot slower than HERO. I also came to M&M chargen with a bit of a HERO mindset, and it took me forever to figure out how to get my character right.

But like I said, none of us had ever played M&M before, while just about everybody in my HERO group is a 20+ year veteran.  I'd love to give M&M another shot; it's the only system other than HERO I'd likely use for supers.


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## PCD (May 16, 2004)

Made my first HERO character...my head hurt.  Remade it after I realized some mistakes...my head hurt.  Reread some areas to and realized that I could optimize some aspects of my character...my head hurt.  I really like the system, except for the fact that a lot of book keeping has to be done.


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## tetsujin28 (May 17, 2004)

I have played Hero since before it came out as Champions (1981, for those who are counting). It has _a lot_ to keep track of, especially for a GM ("13 stats for skeletons? The hell?"). It is very, very flexible. But I think it's a bit dated. I'm not going to look through all 11+ pages of this thread, but my main question would be: What are you looking for Hero to do? Superheroes? IMHO, Mutants and Masterminds is the game that made me abandon Hero after 23 years. Fantasy? There are plenty of easier systems that have nearly as much (if not more) 'crunch', combat-wise (Riddle of Steel, Burning Wheel). Super-cool-guy stuff in any genre? Big Eyes, Small Mouth.

But are you looking for the most generic (and I mean that in a good way), detailed system, where you have control over almost _every_ variable? Then Hero's the way to go. Nothing even comes close.

There's also plenty of reviews of Hero 5 (aka FReD/FRED) on rpg.net.

Cheers, and hope this helps!


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## pawsplay (May 17, 2004)

> I really like the system, except for the fact that a lot of book keeping has to be done.




It gets easier, don't worry.   And it's still easier than making a level 12 D&D character from scratch.


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## buzz (May 17, 2004)

tetsujin28 said:
			
		

> "13 stats for skeletons? The hell?"



One of the most useful tips I've picked up from the HERO boards is that, as a GM, you don't necessarily need to know all the stats for minor NPCs, nor worry about making the points add up. As long as you keep in mind the general power level of your game, you can just pick numbers out of the air that seem appropriate. E.g., "These guys should have about 5 PD, 20 STUN, 12 BODY, 3 SPD, and carry shortswords. Oh, and 5 CV." You can even just do STUN on the fly as is dramatically appropriate ("Okay, the mook goes down.")

Hero Games even does this on occasion. Minor NPCs in some of the setting books will usually just have the characteristics and important skills listed, with all of the accounting left out.

Of course, it's still helps a lot to have Hero Designer and some of the NPC books (e.g., _Monsters, Minions & Marauders_). Hero Designer is probably the best chargen sofware ever. If only PCGen worked as well...


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## Driddle (May 17, 2004)

buzz said:
			
		

> One of the most useful tips I've picked up from the HERO boards is that, as a GM, you don't necessarily need to know all the stats for minor NPCs, nor worry about making the points add up. As long as you keep in mind the general power level of your game, you can just pick numbers out of the air that seem appropriate. ...




Actually, that's the secret to GM-ing in almost any game system. Because the players don't particularly want to know -- or at least they don't _need_ to know -- every little mathematical calculation going on behind the screen, as long as the game proves enjoyable overall.

I've noticed that this time around, the HERO system is producing stronger supplemental materials for building genres and characters. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of complaints about being "forced to buy another book" (whine whine whine). That aside, though, it's pretty easy to go through the Superpowers supplement and construct a satisfactory character with no or little tweaking necessary.


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## buzz (May 17, 2004)

Driddle said:
			
		

> Actually, that's the secret to GM-ing in almost any game system. Because the players don't particularly want to know -- or at least they don't _need_ to know -- every little mathematical calculation going on behind the screen, as long as the game proves enjoyable overall.



Very true. I think people often default to stating everything out, especially in HERO, seeing as you *can* stat out virtually everything the game world. It's good to be reminded that this isn't necessary.

The GM of my HERO campaign rarely has any books open, and the few notes he has are written in this little 4" x 6" notebook. He just seems to have it all in his head, and doesn't sweat full-on stats, save for when he using a villain book.



			
				Driddle said:
			
		

> I've noticed that this time around, the HERO system is producing stronger supplemental materials for building genres and characters. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of complaints about being "forced to buy another book" (whine whine whine). That aside, though, it's pretty easy to go through the Superpowers supplement and construct a satisfactory character with no or little tweaking necessary.



It's one of the nice things about the current edition. That, and you can get all of these supplements as add-on packs for Hero Designer.


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