The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

[Steve Long]

One of the things that working on 6E (or any version of the rules) has done is make me think about all the things I really like about the HERO System -- the things that make it distinctive, special, and cool to me. So I thought I'd start a little thread to praise them a bit. I'd enjoy hearing other peoples' lists.

 

I realize no one will obey these guidelines, but please, if you want to respond, keep it positive and on-topic. Don't speculate about what this means for 6E; it doesn't really mean anything. Don't talk about other games with similar features; I don't care. Don't complain, or qualify, or issue caveats. Just say something positive, and describe what you like.

 

In no particular order:

 

The Martial Arts rules: Flexible, fun, and cool. I've had more fun using these rules to "customize" what my character can do in combat, and how, than I can possibly describe.

 

Adjustment Powers: From a Line Developer's perspective they are incredibly annoying at times, but they really do allow for such a wide range of abilities and effects that other games don't always have.

 

The Speed Chart: Perhaps it's just three decades of experience with it, but I really like the way it structures combat scenes.

 

Presence and Presence Attacks: One of the single coolest things about HERO in my opinion. It just blew my mind, way back when, that the game had a mechanic to represent, so fluidly and elegantly, how *impressive* a character can be. Also great for occasional humor value.

 

The Language Familiarity Table: A frikkin' work of genius. I love this thing.

 

KSs and PSs: Same. As any of my regular GMs will tell you, I love loading characters down with *lots* of these because they so wonderfully define my character's interests and background. A superb prompt for roleplaying and character development, at least to me.

 

The bell curve: Much better for my preferred style of gaming than a linear dice mechanic.

 

 

Naturally, I reserve the right to add to this list from time to time.

 

So... what's on your list?

[Sean Waters]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Lot's of stuff

 

I really like the SPD chart - it is something no other system does as well IMO.

 

I really like 3d6! That is so obvious I forget it myself sometimes.

 

I love LOVE the index. I know that may sound a bit odd, but it covers everything and in a game as rich as Hero it is a godsend.

 

All the other stuff on your list too.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Reasoning From Effect. To me, this is the central jewel in the HERO System crown... the concept that really separates it from the crowd more than anything else.

 

Cinematic Reality. I like the fact that the system generally errs on the side of characters being more competent rather than less.

 

The SPD Concept. I have a love-hate relationship with the Speed Chart (though definitely more love than hate). But the concept of some characters acting more often than others in a given amount of time... love that.

 

Background Skills.

 

Combat Maneuvers. The whole concept, including Martial Arts.

 

There's More Than One Way To Do It. The fact that most game-world abilities could be built multiple ways in game mechanics terms. I think that's great.

 

Separation Of Damage. I love the fact that there is a clear, non-kludgy way of tracking killing a character separately from knocking a character out.

[Legendsmiths]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

As a linguist, I also really like the Language Familiarity Table.

 

STUN & BODY - I really like having characters taken out of a fight without being killed.

 

STR, BODY, DEF & objects - I think it is awesome to look at the unity between STR and Lift/Load and Object DEF/BODY and how easy it makes so many wierd brick and non-brick situations. One of my favorites.

 

PRE Attacks - always make an encounter more interesting.

[Kenn]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Designing a character instead of randomly rolling up a character. This was a big selling point for me.

 

Primary and figured characteristics. The inter-connectivity led to a natural consistency to the mathematical model of people regardless of their level of ability, power or skill.

 

STUN and BODY - two different types of damage to represent different aspects of how people get hurt.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Mechanically things that just impressed the heck out of me when I first encountered the system:

 

Speed Chart - it's just such an elegant way of actually having FASTER characters, not just people who go first. I love it.

 

Disadvantages - the story potential alone in this aspect of the system is awesome.

 

Martial Arts - Just knowing I can match a description to mechanics and have it MEAN something. It's awesome.

 

From a conceptual aspect

 

Reasoning From Effect - the whole idea is so obivously awesome I can't imagine not creating a Game, Character, Power, Equipment or anything else without using this. I extend it to everything - when creating a campaign it's nice to write down without Game Stuff what I want, then go to make it.

 

Cinematic Flare over Reality - I love the idea of playing The Cool Hero. I love that the weird and impossible is always at least within visible range if not outright doable without going too far out of bounds. The idea that the system just encourages you to Be Cool is great, erring on the side of success is always more fun.

 

I like the 3D6 curve personally as well. It's easy to grok.

[sinanju]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Disadvantages--specifically the generic "Psych" or "Physical" or "Social" limitation. Instead of selecting one of a set of predefined limitations, you decide what the disadvantages are. It gives you a vast canvas on which to paint your character, and you can use them (or I do) to define my character's personality--lots of low value Psychs that don't frequently cause real trouble, but make his motives, values and "hot buttons" very clear.

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Comeliness: An underrated Characteristic that's more useful than it's given credit for (if you don't want to take my word on it, ask Bob for a certain PDF he's created ). It will be used in my campaigns regardless of what does or does not happen with 6th Edition.

 

Figured Characteristics: Makes character creation easy and fun. Ditto above.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

My choices, in no particular order:

 

Point-based construction and advancement. I can build my character the way I want him to be. If I can't do that with the beginning points, then I can scale him back and let him grow into it. I don't have pre-defined abilities or advancement path.

 

Comeliness. Yes, as Marcus pointed out in reference to my Haymaker! article, there's a lot that can be done with this. I was drawn to the fact that the early Hero System considered one's appearance and force of personality separately. I hope that COM is still supported in future editions of Hero Designer regardless of its presence in the core rulebook.

 

Figured Characteristics. What a way to customize characters! When I first saw this, I was drawn to how this was roughly the equivalent of making adjustments to the secondary features of the Primary Characteristics.

 

Disadvantages: More than just a crock for points, Disadvantages in the Hero System are a way to more clearly define the character, guide his choices, and tell his personal story.

 

The Speed Chart: This was such a brilliant innovation at the time that when I created my "homebrew" system I used the Speed Chart as the inspiration for how character turns worked. (I've been putting off posting in this forum an adaptation of that method to Hero System; maybe I'll do it in the near future).

 

Power Construction: With only few exceptions -- most of which have been addressed in successive editions, and a few having promise to be addressed in the next -- any power, spell, or other ability or property found in comics, television, movies, and other source material can be duplicated using the Hero System. Powers aren't what the designer says they are; they're what the GM and player say they are. And sometimes the mechanics can inspire an application that's never been seen before ("reasoning from effect" isn't 100% the way to go; just 99.8%).

[Eosin]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Combat Engine: Martial Arts, Maneuvers, and tactics. Pure elegance while allowing the cat to be skinned a dozen ways.

 

BODY/STUN/PD/rPD: Simple equation. Awesome effect.

 

KS/SS/AK/CK: Sweet nectar for my soul.

 

Skills: Perfect Balance. Neither too much nor too few. Perfectly priced.

[Xotl]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Everyone knows Hero has reason from effect, but I love just how deeply ingrained that is. You don't have an endless list of skills - you have PS, SS, and KS of whatever kind you want, so I can add any skill to a character and make it work. Similarly, the two disadvantages, Physical and Psychological, contain within them a million possibilities, whereas another game would try to give you an exhaustive list and simply fail.

 

I love Hero for supers, where you can do anything, but I really love it for Fantasy, where I can so powerfully break from the class and race and level mode that burdens so many other fantasy games. I love being able to say, "sure, we can check the following twenty books in this other game for class and feat combinations and mix and match to see if you can get what you want, or you can just tell me what you want and we'll do it.

 

Oh, and perhaps not strictly Hero per se, but I've come to love the members of the Champions Universe. Over a decade of playing I've come to enjoy seeing Black Paladin, Ankylosaur and the rest of the gang turn up. They're like old friends at this point. That's why I'm particularly excited by the release structure for the 6E villain books, as by releasing a giant slew at once it enlarges the base pool of villains that will see more universal play, rather than only releasing a few core villains at the start (though honestly I still hope to see supplemental villain books as well, because I can't get enough of them).

[Doc Democracy]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

This is pretty difficult. When you have played the game for twenty years, the whole time thinking about how you'd make it better it is difficult to go back and really 'see' what it is that you love about the system.

 

For me, it is the customisability (not a real word I think!). The power system is a lovely beast - a set of base game effects that you can tweak a multitude of ways to get what you want.

 

Lots of other things are nice but it is this thing at the core that makes HERO for me...

 

 

Doc

[Vondy]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

The dichotomy of mechanics and effects. Adjunct to this is reasoning from effect and the use of effects as a reality check on mechanics.

 

The Bell Curve - 3d6!

 

The speed chart. I would say, however, Dex order within that bothers me as it feels "set." I want a little more randomness, but the hurry and hipshot rules have added that to some extent. These are good things.

 

No one true way to build things - ergo, abstract modifiable powers.

 

With that - the toolkit approach to the system. Once you have the core principles down you can either go plug-and-play with the options, or tweak it with relative ease.

 

I like the idea of presence attacks, but I implement them somewhat differently. I use characteristic vs. characteristic rolls with a little margin of success table - but that goes back to what's great about hero - since I'm leveraging a core mechanic the change only took a second.

 

I like background skills being free-form so that you can essentially create a plug-and-play skill list that fits your game without having to do a ton of work. I've taken it to the point of defining them with descriptive phrases "doctoral work in musicology" or "former bull riding champion."

 

I've gone back and forth with combat values over the years, but they are a solid mechanic and I've settled into them.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Disadvantages--specifically the generic "Psych" or "Physical" or "Social" limitation. Instead of selecting one of a set of predefined limitations' date=' you decide what the disadvantages are. It gives you a vast canvas on which to paint your character, and you can use them (or I do) to define my character's personality--lots of low value Psychs that don't frequently cause real trouble, but make his motives, values and "hot buttons" very clear.[/quote']

 

 

 

Bingo on that my top one also in no real order

 

point build to conception and reasoning from effect.

 

The incredible flexibility of the whole system. you build what you want not some predefined class. Each campaign can be really tailored to the group.

 

Both PRE and COM

 

The whole Stun and Rec dynamic. Nothing works as well for cinematic reality

 

figured characteristics and how they just seem to fit so well into my creation mode

 

Knockback!!!

 

That I can run a multiverse, multigenre campaign easily with the system.

 

Its hard to stop! They are just so many cool things about HERO

[Killer Shrike]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

I love everything about the HERO System except the math recursions in figureds, the separation between CSLs CLs and PSLs, the SFX-based labels applied to some Powers that have an assumption baked into the name (like Energy Blast, Force Field etc), the instant / phase based nature of Movement Powers, the few places the rules arbitrarily assert to do or not do something X way just because, some unnecessary redundancy in mechanics that could be unified, and EDM used as a defacto "Alter Reality" effect.

 

 

My most favorite aspects however, are:

 

Separation of mechanic and effect; the abstractness it allows for is essential.

 

Expressive point-based character design; this is what hooked me on the HERO System all those years ago -- the ability to shape the character I had in my mind and encouragement to do so. It was like going from a tricycle to a racing bike in terms of the class and level and random gen systems I had played before. No training wheels, near infinite horsepower...wow what a rush!

 

The Power system; the ability to model whatever I can think of if I want to try is huge. I'm not married to the specific implementation of base effect, advantages, limitations, adders; but the spec to take a base effect and make it better and / or worse with the outcome of a modified price is, to me, a core concept.

 

The flexibility of the skill model; its incredibly rich, but also easily extended.

 

The allowance for characters to have different numbers of actions; I like the SPD chart in general, but so long as its possible for character A to have more actions than character B, and pay for the privilege the implementation isn't as important to me.

 

The combat system, particularly the Maneuver orientation; the HERO System core combat engine works beautifully, and has been emulated by some more modern games. It's so elegant and flexible that I am constantly impressed with it. The Maneuver orientation also allows for the incredibly rich and awesome Martial Arts system, and even more esoteric things like Mental Maneuvers. I'd like to see growth in this area, but no serious alterations -- it's almost perfect in its current form in my opinion.

 

Presence Attacks and Interaction Skills; so few games do anything useful around social interactions, either ignoring it altogether or implementing clumsy or incomplete mechanics. The PRE attack idea was BRILLIANT; whoever had it was on their game the day they thought of it. The well defined social skills and how they interact with PRE is also very good. I'd love to see more development in the Social arena to build on this already great idea. NPA's applied to PRE attacks are an anomaly that causes me headaches that I don't think should be allowed, and the levels of effect needed to accomplish some things are a bit high, but all in all this is a fantastic aspect of the HERO System.

 

More than one way to skin a cat; I love the fact that given a target effect, there are usually more than one viable way to accomplish it. This prevents characters from being too cookie cutter and also makes designing characters more fun, since there's always the opportunity to produce something distinct.

 

Complex offensive and defensive strategies; a combination of the nuanced combat engine and the flexibility of ability designs is that there are many different, competitive ways for characters to cover offensive and defensive capabilities; its the rare game where the armored-tank and the dodgy-scrapper and the buffed-wild card characters can all be equally viable.

 

The ability to scale the power level of the game and fit the mechanic to my envisioned setting vs the other way around; this is probably the most significant thing to me as a game master, and what has kept me coming back to the HERO System over and over again. I don't have to bend my concept to fit some game designers assumption of what is and is not possible with a given system. I decide what is and is not possible and I express it using HERO System's mechanics. I wish the inherent differences in scale were better integrated with the system, but overall this is a HUGE advantage of the HERO System.

 

 

Complete Core Rules; I love the fact that the HERO System is defined in one book that has everything I need, and requires nothing else. I don't care if the book is huge; in fact I derive a certain amount of tactile enjoyment from perusing such a compendious tome. I can live with the fact that 6e will be split into two parts, but I hope that the lack of supplement-itis remains in tact. I don't want to feel compelled to buy multiple books to get missing pieces of the core mechanics.

 

 

So, it seems that diversity, flexibility, resolution, design freedom, and rules completeness are the most important traits of the HERO System for me.

[Alibear]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

The little things really.

 

Like being able to bleed to death and heroicly go out fighting.

 

The difference between immunity to alcohol and environmental movement: alcohol.

 

The first I saw the character with the big claws who had +4dcv only v characters without resistant defences. A real epiphany for me.

 

Being able to define loads of different real ways of fighting and being able to build it. Want your character to specialise in groundfighting? No problemo.

 

Being able to build just about anything.

[nexus]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Body/Stun: I love being able to duplicate out but not dead or dying but still active effectively and simply

 

Comeliness: It seems allot of use in my games and I think it fits the cinematic realism the Hero System models very well.

 

KS/PS/SS: Sometimes hard to define exactly but allow for a great deal granularity when defining a character's abilities

 

Martial Arts: It has wrinkles but, IMO, is one of the best simulations for martial art of all sorts.

[NestorDRod]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

There were two elements unique to Champions that sold me to the game when it first came out (the fact that it was a point-buy system did appeal to me, but it was not unique to the system):

 

The Speed Chart - All that can be said about this concept has been said already. To this day, I have not seen a more elegant way of handling the ability for some characters to do more things than others during a turn in combat.

 

Separating BODY and STUN - I can knock somebody out without automatically killing them? Sign me up.

 

The symmetry of the bell curve was not immediately apparent, but as soon as I recognized its beauty, it became another selling point for me. The times I have been forced to go back to some flat percentile system (such as the dreaded d20) I have cursed its ability to give high or low rolls as often as average ones.

 

The other elements mentioned are icing on the cake, but those two (three) are on the top of my list.

[Mirgos]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Although I haven't yet had a chance to actually play or GM I LOVE this system for its flexibility, scale & scope. I can spend hours tinkering & designing characters & gadgets that will, unfortunately, never see the light of day.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Body and Stun, Normal Attacks vs. Killing Attacks, Normal vs. Resistant Defenses. You can represent a deadlier attack, mechanically! Or a more powerful but less deadly attack. I can now knock someone out without killing them!

 

A unified combat mechanic. I roll 3d6 to hit, regardless of what kind of combat it is. I add my OCV and subtract their DCV from 11, and see if I hit. If I hit, I do damage which is reduced by defenses!

 

Skills! Skills were new and awesome! Combat and noncombat Skills!

 

Advantages and Limitations. A Power can do more, or less, than what it says in the book, and cost appropriately. The idea that you can use "Only Vs. X" and "Not Vs. Y" to fine tune what an ability can do.

 

Modular Power builds. The notion that I have a pile of parts that I can build abilities out of. The system gives me a way to look at an ability and, based on what it does, give me a way to reasonably determine how relatively powerful it is compared to other abilities.

 

Disadvantages. The notion that you could get bonus points by giving your character penalties in other areas. For instance, in D&D every once in a while you'd see a character with something in the notes like "Lost left hand in a fight with a dragon and now wears a hook instead." But Hero could actually give you stats to represent all of those things. Aside from just penalties or combat stats, Disadvantages also brought story to my games; where previously the "story" was just recounting where you went, who you fought, and what you got, in Hero it was also about what you did that wasn't just fighting and questing for treasure; it was about who you knew, why you knew them, how you felt about them, and what you (or they) would do for (or to) you; it was about facing and overcoming your fears, learning how to work within or exceed your limits.

 

SPD, hexed movement, and combat maneuvers. Plus Body and Stun, they made combat about more than just "I swing. I hit. 5 damage." They gave you a reason to think tactically the way your characters would.

 

END and Pushing. There was a resource that governed how much you could do, and you could burn that resource harder to save the world!

 

Special Effects! I can decide what my Power looks like and to an extent how it works.

 

The idea that a game could actually try to mimic the source material. All through the Champions books we're told, if your character wants to do something that you've seen characters in the comics do, he should be able to! Likewise fantasy, science fiction, giant robots (yay!), and on and on.

 

I'm sure that, given time, I can think of more.

 

(Hero was more influential on the hobby as a whole than any game except D&D. Did you know that there was a period of several years where you could go to any random convention, and find as many Hero players as D&D players, sometimes more?)

[The Main Man]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Soft Qualities

 

Special Effects - (Next to) No power is inherently hardcoded into the system, allowing for flexibility. This is a quality that Mutants & Masterminds disappointed me with.

 

Adjustable Realism- The realism of the rules is more ground-up than top-bottom, so making a game more realistic is as easy as stacking mechanics, rather than removing them to make the game less realistic.

 

Genericism (?) - The system, as I understand it, has been continuously moving away from being "supers rules that apply to other genres" and more into "rules that can simulate any genre, including supers." This being said by a guy whose favorite genre is superheroes.

 

 

Hard Qualities

 

Consistent and Cross-Referential Mechanics - For example, you only need to be explained what "Normal Damage BODY" is once, and afterword it becomes so ingrained that it is second-nature to say it.

Flash - count the BODY, STR vs. STR - BODY vs. BODY, Knockback - subtract 2d6 from the BODY - It's so easy!

 

This leads into...

 

Flexible Combat - HERO System Combat is superficially complex, but it is quite possibly the most flexible "hard combat" (as opposed to say, FUDGE or Risus) system that I have ever seen.

 

Power Construction - First and the best that I've seen. It's truly the crown jewel of the system. Make what you want.

 

Damage Reduction - I don't mean the power but rather the system's mechanics of reducing damage as a way of giving credit and credence to inherent toughness of a character.

D&D, for example and on the other hand, lumps the toughness and the agility of a character into the same mechanic: Armor Class.

A Full-Plate Mail character technically is rather easy to hit, the hits just do not account for much damage, but sfx go out the window and people just say, "I missed."

This ties into HERO's "Special Effects" philosophy.

 

I might think of others, give me a while...

[Dragon-D1]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

The elegance of the power system, in most supers games, for instance, you have a large list of powers, but in Hero there are relatively few and the ways to make them do what you want.

 

The saleability of character power level Normal -> Heroic -> Superheroic, love the ease and effectiveness of it.

 

Reasoning form Effect: This is the defining feature of the system if you ask me. I know I kind of mentioned this with the fist point, but it deserves a second mention.

 

 

 

Did I mention Reasoning from Effect?

[Vulcan]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

The social systems in the rules - Interaction Skills, PRE attacks, and even Super Skills built as Mental Powers . They provide enough assistance for me to play a character who is really persuasive (or seductive, or good at making a speech) without straitjacketing me into one option when someone else persades me. Our group refers to it as 'getting the rules out of the way of the roleplaying!':D

 

COM. Sometimes I want my character to be visually striking without bothering to make them really social-oriented. COM works perfectly for that!

 

The SPEED CHART! Core of the whole system, without it there simply is no HERO System!

 

And Disadvantages. That is such a great tool for communicating with the GM about what aspects of my character I really want to see emphaiszed in game play. My only complaint is that perhaps we should change the name to 'Complications,' because to call them 'Disadvantages' puts a rather negative spin on one of the best parts of the game!

[Matt the Bruins]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

The flexibility of the character creation rules would be my #1 favorite thing about the HERO System. I think it provides more options than any other game system I've ever seen. I love that it can be used to model the exact character you want to play in the exact genre you want to play in, whether that's a hard-bitten gumshoe in Pulp-style adventures or a cosmically powerful alien policeman in a high powered sci-fi superhero setting.

 

Likewise, the background work put into customizing the rules to various genres is something very special.

 

Among the specific mechanical aspects that I really like are:

 

• the separate tracking of consciousness/incapacity and physical health/injury, and the further separation of resistance to both sorts of harm from the ability to absorb them.

 

• END, as a basic concept and how it plays out when running the game.

 

• the wide range of combat maneuvers and tactics available.

 

• the languages set-up, which is probably the best I've ever seen in any game system.

 

• the rules for Perks such as Bases, Vehicles, and Followers, and the approach to the Summoning power that somewhat echoes them.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

 

Much of what everyone else said, and especially:

 

STUN vs BODY - a very useful distinction

 

Disadvantages

 

Building the character you want, rather than rolling the character randomly

 

Spending Experience Points - no levels

 

The attitude of "you can build whatever you want, you just have to pay for it". A "yes, you can" attitude, instead of a "no, you can't" attitude. No prerequisites.

 

Special Effects - not having to worry about the difference between "fire damage" and "cold damage" and "laser damage" etc.

 

No character classes. Halleluyah! No being forced into a particular set of abilities or ways to advance.

 

Yes, the Index! Probably the most essential part of any RPG rulebook!

 

Adjustment Powers - very useful, adds a tremendous amount of building power to the system, despite whatever flaws they may have.

 

Martial Arts custom maneuver-building rules - I've never been into martial arts that much, but the buildable manuevers are great!

 

END - the use of powers and STR and movement, gradually makes you tired. Obvious, really. Instead of the "X uses per day" model.

 

REC - recovery

 

No discrete "spells" or "powers" - everything is "upgradable". Want more dice of power? Just add a few more points to your existing power.

 

Normal vs Killing attacks - along with STUN vs. BODY, a very useful distinction.