ScottishFox

I live in Texas and it hasn't always been this way. It feels like a reaction to the fact that people have decided that shooting up churches is a good way to commit suicide-by-cop.

Literally nobody I play Fantasy HERO with thinks the rules need more clarifications for edge cases. I think the Grab section of Vol 2 is 6+ pages for that single maneuver. Admittedly, I really liked 4th edition and to a lesser extent 5th edition. The rules for 6th edition make sense - but it's so granular even my nerdiest player balked at the two part rules encyclopedia.

Last Saturday went well though using HERO to simulate the abilities has resulted in some cost differential problems. I've decided to go an unusual route and use a default cost of zero for all abilities that are on the level-up rails. Characters will get a smaller amount of CP for stats, skills and custom abilities, but everything on the class lists will be ignored for character totals. I'll have to see how this plays out as one of the things HERO does well is balance point costs of abilities. If the level-up abilities aren't netting out in terms of cost it's probably because they're inherently unbalanced in power.

Roll Low Method: OCV 11 / DCV 07 = Hit: 15 / Crit: 07 OCV 09 / DCV 07 = Hit: 13 / Crit: 06 OCV 07 / DCV 07 = Hit: 11 / Crit: 05 Roll High Method: OCV 11 / DCV 07 = Hit: 06 / Crit: 12 ?? ( 11/2 = 5 - 10 = -5 + 12 = 7 = hit?) Seems like a MUCH higher crit range. I'm probably borking the math. OCV 09 / DCV 07 = Hit: 08 / Crit: 13 ?? OCV 07 / DCV 07 = Hit: 10 / Crit: 14 ?? I can't make the math work. Just inverting the model the crit ranges should have been 14, 15, 16.

My wife's chronic illness has us so off our game this year that both of us failed to properly plan for Christmas shopping and wrapping. In one of the more pathetic scene's of the year my 10 year old wrapped her own gifts that we ordered for her off of Amazon and then the next day opened her own self-wrapped Christmas gifts. Complete parental failure on our part. Fortunately, we've loved her up enough over the years that she only briefly chastised us and then we picked up the day by playing the Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne board game.

One concern I have with a Roll High system is calculating crits. If a critical hit on a Roll Low system is rolling under 1/2 of the needed roll (11 or less to hit becomes 11/2 = 5.5 so 5 or less to crit) then what is the crit range for a Roll High setup? Also, all of the Hexman dice have the Hexman on the 1. A natural 3 is a triple Hexman! Rolling three 6s won't have the same pop.

Some of it is just the action economy of the game. If you have the highest DEX you can go first when you want to OR hold your phase. If you have a lower DEX you can't do that. Some of it is some friendly competition at the table somewhat like Legolas and Gimli racing for minion count while fighting for their lives. Going first allows more kills.

Fixed action order lead to constant DEX races in my Saturday group so I re-instated a variation of D&D's initiative roll which we do in HERO as a Dex roll. Whoever makes the roll by the most goes first. Highest DEX wins on ties. Works pretty well and adds a little variety to action order.

I recall in college being at 10% body fat or so (totally ripped, 6 pack, the works) and being 25 lbs into the obese range for my 5'10" frame. The BMI pays no attention to body composition at all and places any athlete with some muscle mass into the obese category. It's about as useful as using a mackerel to chop down trees.

Man, this just hits me right in the nostalgia button. Over the decades between my old games and new games (took a 20 year break in the middle) the people I'm still occasionally in touch with on the book of Face or the phone are the ones I played Champions, Fantasy HERO, and Danger International with. A couple of years ago a guy I went to high school with just popped out a character sheet from 1988 and we reminisced. Many of the players have gone on to be heroes in one way or another and I feel like we could still - all the years between no more than a pause button - sit down for a game and pick up where we left off.

I currently DM for both systems and I feel like you're being excessively kind to D&D 5e here. D&D 5e: Roll to-hit adding you (STR Bonus or DEX bonus) plus your proficiency bonus plus your weapon enchantment bonus (if any) plus your maneuver bonus (such as precision strike - if any). If you have advantage roll 2x 20s and take the better number. If you have disadvantage then 2x 20s and take the worse result. If you have both advantage and disadvantage then go back to rolling a single d20. Roll and sum your 2d6 damage dice + your STR/DEX bonus + your weapon enchantment bonus + 2 if you have the Duelist fighting style + any spell effect damage from allied buffs + maneuver damage potentially if you're a battle master. I agree with the perception that HERO math is nastier than D&D math and yet I play at tables that have been running 3+ years and players are still stumbling over their stack of various things to add & subtract and the particulars of their various class features, feats, spells and items to determine what they're doing. Sorry Monk - you can't bonus action disengage because you took a bonus action unarmed attack during your attack sequence. Sorry sorceror you can't cast fireball because you used your bonus action to cast shield of faith and the action rules say if you cast a bonus action spell you're restricted to cantrips for your action and on and on and on. HERO feels more front-loaded (more to learn to get rolling), but you can apply the general approach while D&D is an exercise in memorization.

This last Saturday our intrepid band of adventurer's worked their way down to the 3rd level of the Endless Paths of Od Nua. There they met the Ogre Thulgar and learned of the cannibalistic tribe of Ogre Druid's that would need to be defeated to reach the 4th level. They promptly packed up their !@#$ and headed to Defiance Bay which had me scrambling to collect all of the quest givers and available plot threads as they derailed my plans for the day. So far the game is working out pretty well. The per-fight resources are working well with the magic/maneuvers having big impacts. The flip side is having those moves thwarted REALLY hurts (spell interrupts, enemies diving for cover, blocking, etc.). The HERO converted spell casting rules hit the spot in terms of feel. Each rank of spells has some quick cast (1/2 or full phase) spells that are weaker than the others of the same rank. Stronger spells have a cast time of 3.0 to 4.5 seconds. Which in HERO is a very long time. During this casting window the casters can be interrupted and the delay allows defenders to always have an option available (dodge, dive for cover, etc.) to avoid the hard hitting spells.

My daughter had forfeited her electronics privileges for a couple of weeks and decided - out of sheer boredom - to play "D&D" with the Saturday group (we use HERO system). She loved it. Now my wife and daughter are both at the table for the Saturday game.

If you haven't read through it yet The Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw is a thing of low-magic beauty.

I've gone down this road with two groups now. This is highly variable, but once everyone knows their maneuvers and numbers (OCV, DCV, Damage, etc.) then it is just slightly longer than a D&D round. Primarily because hit locations introduce an extra roll and a little math. Although, I've found that D&D 5e fights tend to take much longer in T3-T4 due to ever increasing hit point totals. In HERO the fights take about the same amount of time at all levels as long as offense & defense are scaling with villain offense & defense. Short answer: Yes. HERO system characters (super & heroic) do not generally scale their BODY scores much. In D&D you can start with 10 hp and be well over 100 later in your career. A D&D 5e fighter can leap from a 300 foot cliff, take 70 HP of damage and walk off in relatively good health at higher levels. A Fantasy HERO character that takes that drop is probably unconscious and somewhere between dead instantly and severely injured. My players quite enjoyed that at the end of their careers they could blow through a troup of bandits like golden gods and still get hurt enough by a lucky long bow shot that they couldn't ignore the threat any armed opponent represented. Also, congrats on bringing another group to HERO. D&D 5e public play is a great place to meet players and bring them to the D6 Side.

Do you have a rough estimate until this is published on Steam? I am eager to throw money at you.

I feel this is the tricky part. Let's say that Hero1 buys a 10d6 blast with 16 charges for 50pts. Hero2 buys a 10d6 blast (cold) and a 10d6 blast (fire) both with 8 charges and Extra Time (Full Phase) so they're 25 pts each for a total of 50 pts. If Hero1 wants to blast SuperVillain01 twice he must use Multiple Attack and takes a -2 OCV on both shots (increasing his odds of missing one or both shots) and is 1/2 DCV until his next phase. If Hero2 wants to blast SuperViallin01 twice he gets to use Combined Attack and takes no penalty to OCV and no penalty to DCV improving his odds of landing both shots. They've both paid the same amount of points, but one of them is far more effective in the scenario where they'd like to double up on damage output. Granted - Hero1 has a general advantage in being able to attack as a half-phase, but this could probably be finagled with some limitations cherry picking (unified power and something else worth a -1/4). This is a very tricky balancing act. It's a very different thing to burn down an opponent in 3 phases while being full DCV vs. doing the same while being 1/2 DCV or needing 6 phases. I could see GMs tossing them both out for the sake of balance.

I made more of my own content back in the day when I didn't have to juggle game time in between family and a demanding job. What I especially like to do now is take professionally created content and then modify it to suit my players. This is far less time consuming and comes with professionally drawn maps, handouts, fleshed out and familiar worlds with their own history, etc. I suspect a large chunk of the population that played Champions, Danger International, Fantasy HERO and so on have grown up and had families and don't have the same kind of free time they did back in the 80s/90s. I think a stack of high quality adventures for Champions and Fantasy HERO would have sold quite well when the player base was larger. That's a complete guess on my part of course, but I would throw money at my screen to get adventures. Evermist, for example, is not on the same production quality level, but I bought it immediately and it was quite good.

That scenario makes Multiple Attack VERY unattractive. Going 1/2 DCV in a gunfight when you're probably sporting 1-2 rPD at best is a recipe for disaster. Realistically there's a reason you never see police or military dual wielding, but blazing two hot irons feels very genre appropriate and would hopefully be constructed in a way to be on par with the alternative. This is something I've found difficult to balance right since Sweep came up in Fantasy HERO back in the 80s/90s.

This will be interesting to see how it plays out. I've seen a decent drop in player attendance at one store I play at and the other is holding steady. It's certainly not the overflowing mass of new players that it was a couple of years ago. I feel like adventure content - Professionally written and illustrated - is a huge missing piece for Fantasy HERO. I've been running 1 or 2 Fantasy HERO tables a week for a couple years now and ALL of the players had to be lured over from D&D. Once that was done I had to run Pathfinder or D&D content - converting on the fly to HERO - since there is so little created for Fantasy HERO. Even back in the 80s I was primarily using D&D adventures with a mix of some home brew content We played through Evermist and it was very enjoyable, but in terms of production value - it is not going to pull dollar bills out of pockets when compared to a Pathfinder or D&D 5e product.

In my campaigns we consider a STUN of 0 to -9 to be "out on your feet" like a badly rocked boxer or MMA fighter, but not prone or unconscious.

This is a difficult thing to balance out. Contributors on both sides have made strong arguments for and against. If you don't allow it then it penalizes the character who purchased their powers outside of a framework. They've paid more points for no additional benefit. If you do allow it then a character who purchased their 10d6 Blast, 10d6 Flash, 5d6 NND and 3d6+1 RKA separately (possibly with some limitations like Foci and charges to manage costs) gets to unload all attacks simultaneously on a single target. Assuming you allow Combined Attacks how do you manage the burst/alpha strike nature of all of these attacks going off simultaneously? I feel like it works OK if the separate powers are small add-ons (4d6 Flash to go with 10d6 Blast) but rapidly breaks down if the separately purchased powers are all of equal strength. Do you force character to put their powers in a framework? If you have a 50AP cap for the campaign are they limited to a single attack power? I don't see any easy balancing options for this approach and I do see Chris' concern. Multiple attack is massively penalized (1/2 DCV, Full Phase, Stacking OCV penalty) while Combined Attack looks VERY abusable. Great discussion though. It's beneficial to see compelling arguments in both directions.

I sure don't, but apparently it's in the Advanced Player's Guide on page 113 these days.

If I remember correctly it is a flat 3 points to bypass 1 point of resistant defense. It's been a couple of decades so I might be off a little on the original pricing. But, it's pretty handy to simulate something like a stiletto where it's so sharp and pointy that you let it ignore the first two points of armor, but not be armor piercing against a dragon.

While running a Pathfinder - to - HERO converted module I wanted to incorporate the rock-paper-scissors that various spells have against various enemy types (mental spells vs. Fighters, Dex spells vs. Mages, CON spells vs. Rogues, etc.). Eventually I came up with a simple formula for representing DCV vs. Spells. Spells target an attribute (Usually DEX, EGO or CON) and the target gets a DCV of STAT/3. EGO 15 = DCV 5 vs. Mind Spells, CON 18 = DCV 6 vs. spells affecting health, etc. It's worked out pretty well.