Why Should I Buy Advanced Player's Guide I and/or II?

[tripthicket]

I may be overgeneralizing, but it seems to me that there are three categories that HERO products fall into, with some overlap. There's settings books (such as Galactic Champions or Vibora Bay), there's character books (Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains or Conquerors, Killers and Crooks), and there's rules books (HERO System 6th Edition: Character Creation or HERO System Advanced Player's Guide). I suppose that an argument could be made for a fourth category, examples books (Champions Powers or The Ultimate Brick), or even more general categories, but let's not keep splitting hairs or every single book will fall into its own category. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But what's my point?

 

I've seen posts ever since I started reading online about roleplaying games, and a very common statement from self-professed GMs is that they don't bother with the settings books much, as they have their own world(s) already built. Some of them may get a few of those books anyway, to mine for ideas. My favorite type of book falls into the character category; I love seeing (somewhat) new combinations of powers built into new and interesting characters, whether villain, hero, civilian, or what-have-you. For this same reason, I love examples books. And I think all of us can agree that rules books are a necessity, although it's arguable which books are necessary and which ones aren't. Which comes to my real point.

 

I'm considering purchasing the Advanced Player's Guide I & II. I already have Character Creation and Combat & Adventuring. Behind character books and example books, my next choice would be rules books, of which some could be said to be part-example book, too. My question (finally) is, having the two main rulebooks for HERO System 6th Edition, why should I buy these guidebooks? What are they mainly about?

 

Which leads me to a tiny side-rant to close this out. What's up with the store? I haven't exhaustively pored over every item in the store, but in general I get the sense that there's a difference in the way 5th Edition and 6th Edition books are presented. With 5th Edition, there's info that includes author, ISBN number, number of pages, detailed description of contents, etc.; in effect, more than some advertising blurb that may or may not be helpful in describing what the book is actually about. With 6th Edition, all of that seems to be absent in far too many cases. Many of the more recent products are only available in PDF, which might have something to do with it, but if so, why? I've looked over lots of 6th Edition books and products, but most of them have only very scant descriptive text which does little or nothing to entice me to buy them. In fact, the only reason I will buy a book from the HERO store, when I do, is because I've been a HERO system fan for 25 years and want to support the company. The choice of which book I'm likely to buy is discussed above, but the store isn't really helping, at least for me. I get most of my information on 6th Edition books from other sources, and that shouldn't be a necessity, says I. Okay, rant over.

[Hyper-Man]

The Advanced Player Guides are in some ways the 6e equivalents to the very popular 5e Ultimate Series of books.  While the 6e Hero System Martial Arts is pretty much a direct update of the 5e Ultimate Martial Artist, the other Ultimate books have not got a direct translation into a single books. New optional rules introduced in most of those books now reside in the APGuides.  If you like the presentation of 6e 1&2 you should enjoy the APG books.

[Christougher]

The only reason IMO to consider getting the APG books is that you *enjoy* tinkering with the rules.  They include lots of new and optional ways of doing things and a few bits and pieces that didn't make the cut to get into other books.  

 

Chris.

[IndianaJoe3]

The Advanced Players Guides contain both optional rules and  extensions of existing rules. Many of them had appeared in the Ultimate series, but had not been updated to 6e.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There are a lot of great ideas in them, I'd advise at least picking up the pdfs if you do a lot of character design.

[tripthicket]

Well, that's me, then. In between groups, I would construct dozens if not hundreds of characters, trying all kinds of different combinations to bring to life the superfolk living in my head. So mucho thanks to all of you guys! I'll be picking up both of them in the near future.
 

[Christopher]

Each on is part Erata/FAQ.

Part optional (and slightly untested) advatages/powers.

Part completely new rules constructs (like 3 social combat systems and the Resource Points system).

 

You can work without them, but they have simpler solutions to somewhat common problems (but that were not common enough to be featured in 6E1+2).

[megaplayboy]

They have some rules that extend the usefulness of certain powers, create new powers like cyberkinesis, possession, time stop, 100% damage reduction, probability manipulation, object creation, etc.

Also things like mentalism martial arts, social combat and a variety of options for a GM to consider adding to their campaign. Obviously some of the rules would have a dramatic impact on a setting and should be carefully considered first.

[Nolgroth]

Advanced Players Guides are codified house rules. That's the long and short of it. That some of those house rules are more appropriate to a given genre or campaign is besides the point. One that I think is pretty darn awesome is the 10 point increments on Damage Reduction (instead of quarterly increments). Allows for a certain amount of fine control. Whether you should buy them is a matter of how far you want to stretch the Hero experience, how much money you have, and if these extra rules will add value to your game.