Doc Democracy

That is fine if you want the player to have control, he can decide to leave Glamdring at home, or Wormtongue can arrange for him not to have his sword in the throne room. Not possible with physical manifestation. The sword may decide that courtier needs to die. And it happens. Depending on its provenance, the sword may appear in the characters hand, or it may be coincidental that it happens to br close at hand when required. That really leverages the no conscious control... :-)

I do think that the biggest thing HERO can do is facilitate the GM. Ghost Angel is right, HERO is not rules heavy. There is quite a simple system hiding under all the options. A setting that makes all the choices, advises the GM on how to pitch character building with, for a fantasy setting, a pre-baked magic system and a slew of package deals for characters would get over the biggest hump. For experienced HERO folk the accompanying pdf would be explicit about the design choices and settings and some obvious alterations that could be made. I bet most HERO folk would tweak nothing about the campaign and simply design their PCs from scratch.

I think you are putting a lot of work into what are supposed to be numerous and potentially throwaway characters. Have a basic stat block for them, OCV/DCV, DEFENCE, Two or three broad skills to give an idea of background, one or two minor powers and exceptional stats to differentiate them. I will try to come back with two or three examples but am travelling just now and time-limited! :-) Doc

Yeah, strict rules say so. I am inclined to allow it in the case of an attack where the physical manifestation is constant and the attack can be noticed and stopped even before the attack is used. I don't want a focus that can be taken away, I want an attack that can be restrained - so perhaps restrain able is the limitation.... Either way, there is something much more satisfying about a magic sword that cannot be gotten rid of and can potentially Spring into your hand and attack, even if someone thinks they took it away or threw it away...

If the sword chose its owner you might dispense with the OAF and take physical manifestation instead. That would mean that while the attack might be constrained neither the weilder nor anyone else can take it away, unless the sword might decide to leave...

I don't think so. Indeed, it is how Hero worked for me back when it was still just Champions (though the professional skill didn't cost so much! :-) ). What I have done is take that core concept from 2nd edition that allows a broad skill to be used with some latitude, for colour, and then added in the precision details that have been added over the editions. For the new player it allows a broad brush approach to the character as it begins and then to slowly fill in the detail as play progresses and they get a decent idea of what they actually want. All in my oh so humble opinion of course. :-) Doc

Whew!! Just ploughed my way through all 22 pages of this. I do not think HERO is in a healthy place because there does not seem to be a plan for the future that anyone can see. It is nice that there remains a fan base and third parties that will publish decent stuff but that does not make me want to save up my game cash for the next HERO thing coming out. I do not see HERO evolving to meet the needs of the new market and we all know what happens to things that do not evolve, don't we? To me, gaming is a hobby. I do it because I like to. People get involved because they want to. Some folk see an opportunity to make a living, many see a chance to get back some of their expenses, most do it as a labour of love. HERO is not gathering all of this up into any kind of coherent momentum. I buy stuff that makes me excited and ready to part with my cash. Games I am invested in have a lower threshold to cross to persuade me to part with that cash than other stuff because I know I like it but the also lack the excitement of the 'new' that other stuff might offer. I think HERO needs to be thinking how it excites its core as well as attracts those who have never played it. Doing the odd book of content that is the same but different to past books of content is a great way to tread water. A core base means you have an opportunity to innovate - the money is coming in, so try to do stuff that is exciting and new. My rant about all games is the lack of investment in the player user interface (otherwise known as the character sheet). The player interacts with the game via this interface and it is something I think all game companies have failed to invest in. Champions innovated by having the silhouettes on its original sheets, an injection of colour and character other games had failed to do. Modern games will twig this at some point - character sheets should provide players with the colour and uniqueness of the game they are playing. I see future games having electronic character sheets that do all of the bureaucracy in the background and serve up animations and tactical suggestions. Before that, even just sound effects would be cool... As for simple v complex, as Christopher Taylor, Tasha and others have pointed out, it is not necessarily a binary situation. It could be simple for users unless they choose to peel off the wrapper. One key difference in current editions from the original game is the complexity of skills. I used to get by with PS: private investigator for a lot of stuff.... I saw an article suggesting that you build your character during the game. The author had D&D in mind, the players would start the game without a clear idea of their class or anything but would have a decent idea of the game set up. As the game progressed and they needed, for example, a thief, or magical knowledge, or just someone handy in a fight, players would begin making decisions and filling in their character sheet. I can see something similar with HERO. That 15D6 napalm blast mentioned many pages ago. It could indeed simply have that on the sheet with END cost and range. By adding a slight surcharge, the player might develop and refine the nature of that as the game progresses - an element of sticky, maybe a reduced range, maybe some area effect etc etc as the story demands. That would allow the player to stretch out their need to make decisions up front and begin to really engage with their powers. It would also give the GM the ability to allow the player to pull an ace from the hole during play. Similarly, with PS: private investigator, charge 15 points for it and allow the player to make some generic PI rolls until he needs something specific and then start filling out some of the space below the main heading with more specific stuff, as it becomes important to the story. All of this could begin to make HERO feel like a new game even i the core mechanics and engine was untouched. The players might never NEED to see the core if they can be led through it by an intuitive (and in my dreams) interactive character sheet. After 22 pages there is more I want/need to say but I think I can leave it at this for now.... Doc

I used index cards for character sheet supplements. I put powers onto the cards and provided them to the players - one side with text description and basic numbers, the flip side with detailed mechanics. I encouraged the players to play with the descriptions showing and only to refer to the mechanics when necessary.

You know, I never got into gaming to deal with real-life stuff and so I am pre-disposed against this kind of thing. It does look like you have kept a handle on the detail but it is SO unheroic to die of a pus-filled leg due to a wound that never quite healed properly. :-) I have found, in my time, that while many of my players regularly moaned about stuff not be "true to life" or breaking the suspension of disbelief, almost none of them have ever turned their noses up at clean, quick mechanics to get rid of the after-effects of combat! Doc

This is one way we can take a steer from FATE. I think it is helpful for things to be explicitly laid out on the table that highlights the environmental factors that might be used and allow players to define others. That spilled petrol might be useful for the additional damage to the fireblast but may also be used to change the environment for an enemy speedster. it is amazing how often players have to be 'given permission' to do sstuff like that. Putting cards on the table with that on it and even a suggestion of how it might impact play - or allow players to introduce stuff - makes a hell of a difference on how they interact with it. Doc PS: Welcome back Sean!! :-)

I think if you want zero to hero and you have a well planned campaign arc then you might have several points where the heroes undergo "radiation accidents" - localised events that lift their abilities acutely. The way those jumps happen (and the abilities they provide) can build the integration of the characters and the campaign quite powerfully. The jump in powers might also be associated with additional (or replacement) complications which can help to move the plot on and the characters into the next phase. Doc

Most of us, looking at the introductions thread, were around long enough to remember HERO as Champions. Remember how simple it used to be to be a scientist? PS: Scientist.... :-) I think it all depends on how you want your game to run. I love the Ultimate Skill book but actually I hate having to think about all the skills my Nuclear Scientist might need to do what I think a nuclear scientist might be expected to know... I am regressing in a lot of ways towards 2nd Edition but at the same time evolving towards a more narrative way of running 6th Edition. :-) Doc

Hmm. I was waiting for this Lucius and now I am disappointed that you have not explored the avenue I first thought of and could not find the time to think about properly. One of the problems with creating water is the absolute multitude of things that people then want to do with it (as you demonstrate above). If you approach this in the classic HERO fashion (think what you want to accomplish and then build in the game effects) it would be hugely costly. Of those things that create material (as part of their power description) it is Barrier that first came to me. Of course, I could create a barrier made of water. it explicitly states that the material may be left lying around. There is the same problem with that as there might be with claiming you barrier is made of gold, but it does produces material, it has volume constraints and it is a core power, no advantages or limitations. My disconnect has been how you get a barrier made of water, but this is superhero physics, of course it works....whadda ya think?? Doc

Iena Think of it like having several gadgets that all take batteries. You do not have enough batteries for all the gadgets to work at full power. You need to decide how many batteries to put into each gadget. That means you could have a few at full power and others unable to work or you could spread it around and have them all active but possibly none of them at full power. There are options that make things more complex than that but this is how I explain it to my son's 11 year old friends. :-) Ultra Boy from the Legion of Superheroes is the archetypal hero built with a multipower. Doc

Womble, we have totally derailed a fun thread. Apologies everyone. :-( I will refrain from continuing what is, to me, interesting but completely off topic...

Really? And you have no female friends who told you that they willingly slept with a bloke because they were so charming but would never go near them with a bargepole in future (once the charisma wore off?). As I said, I do not disagree with the fact that there is a rohypnol-y potential explanation. i just think that the mechanics themselves do not demand a specific special effect - that would be against one of the fundamental principles of the system! :-)

There is indeed, in real life, a difference between being charming and (I presume chemically mediated) forced seduction. There is even a difference in special effects in a superpower world. I am not so sure that you can say that this mechanical construct cannot have the special effect of such supernatural charm that the opposite sex tend to fall at their feet.

It is a good process to go through. My personal thought is that the complexity of HERO gets shouted out in the character sheet. If you can provide her with a more narrative character sheet with a few numbers here and there, there is no real need to simplify the system. Of course you can do some further work to change that. There were a few examples of that kind of sheet in the sticky thread on subject... Doc

Just a random thought and I havent looked at legality or costs but the orgasmic bliss, to me, sounds like Suppress STUN. Unable to do anything while blissed out. Not actually damaged when the power is ended...

I would say that sleep is a bit too vague. Why does sleep allow them to escape? Is it the length of sleep, the brain activity profile or something else? If the sleep profile could be projected on someone's brain - artificially induced brain pattern - would that work? If so, I think that it would be fine. If it is you need to wait eight hours, then it is not. :-)

When thinking about this, you have to remember that all of the villains plans will take into account the abilities of the heroes, it is the villain's greatest advantage - they know the abilities of the heroes, they know what they face and, if they are wise, will have planned on how to deal with them. not all of those plans will involve finding combat options.

Mental paralysis was a pet hate for my group. If they even suspected a villain had the power they would group stomp him at the expense of all other strategy. as such the power was never used in my campaign by players or villains. try using it as a power on the players and see how they like it, test what their response is to a power that removes them from play with little chance of anyone getting them back into play.

I did run a group of 12 once. It was a competition. We pretended that one of the 2 GMs had not turned up and they would have to play in a large group. The first encounter however was witha the ultimate opponent wielding a soul sword equivalent that killed half the party. That half were then taken from the room to another room where the second GM ran them in a spirit world scenario that mirrored the main one. We had a runner coming down to the main room providing information of what was happening on the spirit plane that would affect the success of the main group. They did not seem to notice at the time that I had killed precisely one of each team participating but I think one or two had twigged something along those lines was going on before the end. The main party was very concerned about the lethality of the game and it made the main session very different than it might otherwise have been. They all got together at the end though, spirits combining with mortals to increase the strength of both to face the main opponent - more than half died the second time too - but this time the bad guy died, not just the PCs... Very stressful and time consuming in my opinion!! :-) Doc

Yeah, 12 players is more than I would attempt. Five at most, even in D&D.

Carrot and stick, Johnny, carrot AND stick. You need to lure them in with the magic. Perhaps allow the fighters to buy charms they can use, one off spells that will begin tempting them to the dark side. You might even look to differentiate the way they fight by restricting the kinds of magic different people can use (star-sign or race or something interferes with the mystic doflips). No point just beating them, they need to find that other stuff works when even the best swords do not...