Doc Democracy

As far as I can see, there is a desire to do damage to people touching metal objects within a defined area. Is there any real need to go into the whole surface stuff? If there is a cone shaped, area effect, selective attack that simply has the limitation of "only versus people touching metal" does this not do the job? I think the power needs to be persistent, that is the longer they hold on to the metal object the more damage they take, for it to have that persuasive effect. Is it not as simple as that? Or is there more to it??

Damn...questions for me. You want the blast only to go off if the blade pierces? That is when it does body?? In that case I would be inclined to reflect that with a limitation but I would also make the attack 1/2D6 NND Killing to reflect that the damage is done once the blade is through the defences of the victim. I can see a case for AVLD (only against the natural ED of the victim) but I think this is very much meant to do BODY?? The explosion part is interesting - I do not see that there is any reason for it except it does do it randomly. Obviously you have the personal immunity but 6m radius makes you a bad person to be fighting beside. :-) It is only 2D6 penetrating and so a nickel and dime type power. If you are only, on average, going to get an explosion once a day (if you manage to get four penetrating hits), then why not make the reason for that something special, spend more points and give it one charge that happens in specific circumstances related to the history of the sword. Use it as an excuse to add colour to the item.

I think that you want to decide what it is you want to do first. If it is superheroes then but Champions Complete and use that to find your way round the system. Most of us started playing when the game was less than 100 pages or so and we managed then. :-) You will always be able to buy more if you need it but I think that, for a starting GM, it is better to have that smaller, more compact, more concise interpretation of the rules. It is easier to hold in your head and most of what is missing is examples on different ways to use the rules. Guess what, we can help you with that better than any book can. :-) Doc

Like folk have said, how you handle it in game is likely to depend on how you have implemented it in game terms. Personally, I can see that any reality warper is going to have an element of power (brute ability) and skill (how refined their use of that power has become). I think that they would declare what they hoped to achieve and then roll, skill versus skill, modified by their brute force, to indicate who won and to what extent they are able to exert their power. The big discussion would be on how far 10AP of reality warping power should aid the skill roll of each and what the difference in the skill rolls would mean in relation to final utilisation of powers. :-) Doc

I like to set guidelines that apply to all the players. I then allow the players to discuss an area in which they will shine, I then allow an additional 15 active points to that spotlight ability. Fly faster, tougher, stronger etc.

Even were you correct Christopher, it is hardly Bob's fault that he was using a chart in a universal system... :-) I am content to use both weapons and environment information as detailed. I then use those as the scales against which I build superheroes - that makes more sense to me than constantly changing the values of walls and weapons... Doc

I will see if I can find some. I did most of it the old fashioned way - colour photocopies pasted onto card... :-( Last HERO game was also over a year ago - havent run a lot recently.

I am attracted by the simplicity of the +STR, only for casual STR. My question is, do you envisage him being able to crash through any and every wall? Or do you see a limit? And you see him as smashing through barriers, leaving holes behind him? I see no problem with folk in the way, I would allow you to pass through hexes with non-combatants in them. If you WANT to damage those people then you are indeed talking move-through. Doc

You are right. People like stuff. They like good-looking stuff better, and good-looking stuff that evokes the genre being played is liked best if all. I have begun to look at providing what the games companies do not. I now rarely use official character sheets, provide counters for END and cards for powers with key information such as dice to roll and END cost on them. Players play powers in front of them and power them up with their END counters. At post 12 recoveries I deal END back to them. It us visual, it is tactile bureaucracy and the cards give a visual representation of what is happening. The cards are a mishmash of scenes and powers ripped off from my comic collection and customised for each player. That kind of thing gives players a very different view of the game they are playing. It is surprising to think that Champions probably started this kind of thing when it issued character sheets with silhouettes on them to encourage players to imagine what their heroes would look like... Doc

I think one of the biggest barriers to new HERO GMs is that a decent game based on HERO really requires a good bit of game mechanic thought put in by the GM before anything starts. It us not just about the setting and story using the rules as written (or even almost as written). What it does do is forestall future arguments by being explicit in what you do and do not want to use or utilise. It also means players will not invest too much thought into mechanics or constructs that will not be accepted. I think it is also worth having a relaxed character creation session where everyone can talk through characters and design and power levels etc. you need to get used to not saying no, but instead, "I don't like that construct, what are you trying to achieve? Let's see how we can get that in another way..."

Skills are an interesting thing. Personally I liked the early Champions idea that, for superheroes, skills were for colour and occasional utility. They allowed access to the things that a secret identity might bring to a superhero story. Steve Long had a different idea and super-skill characters became ones with lots of skills and stuff and the detail of the skills system increased exponentially. In my games I have toned down the skills and utilise skill levels with groups of skills to cover a broad range of skills that characters might expect to know. My games rarely require skills from characters in more than broad strokes. It would be wrong of me to allow players to spend too many points on such things when they may be of little value.

OK, found a bit of a poor example, but this is a HERO character written for people that do not like HERO. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/261-madding-crowdpdf/

Just noticed that the Sixth Edition Character Sheet thread lost all of its attachments - the examples of character sheets that made the thread so interesting. I will see if I can find the sheets that I put up there - they are basic but I think a decent example of what you might want to try for with new players.

OK. I think HERO scares new GMs much more than it scares players simply because there is the ability to focus on a huge amount of detail. A lot of guys on here love to have that in front of them and to utilise it to generate the coolest stuff and have been doing it so long that they can do it on the fly. As a newbie HERO GM (way back in 1982 or somesuch) I bought the game and quailed before it. It sat there for almost a year before I was forced to run it by some nagging friends... :-) I built a few characters and fought them. I made LOADS of mistakes in that and in subsequent gaming sessions because I had no idea how best to build things (and it was a long time before I had any access to resources like this site!!). The big thing is to accept you are learning, that you (and the players) will make build mistakes, that the details of your builds will contradict what you wanted to do in game because of those games. All of that is OK if you all cut each other some slack and allow the game narrative to take care of itself for a while and resolve to go back (after the game) and re-examine, tweak and re-write those bits that did not work. HERO has some detailed ways to build a suite of powers but that is all detail that I would keep firmly behind the scenes to begin with. Focus on the superhero coolness, try to have some idea of the powers and power levels you think things should be and tell a cool story (that is why most folk come back). People love rolling dice - I like to make the dice count for something and so adjust stuff on the fly so that a roll that feels like a good one does something cool and effective (unless the point is to show that this fantastic attack had no effect at all - a good sign for the heroes to plan to run away and come up with a better plan). You can see that in your reply you went from talking about cool effects to jargon and detail? That can turn folk off. In your HERO game it is just as cool to describe the Doc Dastardly scene like: "Doc Dastardly strides out into the middle of the street and raises a weapon you have never seen before - he levels it at HeroGuy (roll 3d6 for a to hit - on your combat notes for Doc Dastardly have a to hit number for each PC - saves on the fly calculations) and a stream of blue energy rushes from it to engulf HeroGuy. (roll damage - or have a list of pre-rolled damage on the combat note - saves rolling the dice and counting them) That does 46 STUN and 18 BODY (an unlikely combination off the top of my head). Knock off your Energy Defence and mark up the damage that gets through and roll for knockback!" "You note Doc Dastardly note the effect as he notches up a dial on the weapon, ready for his next attack!"

I think the biggest thing when you decide to run HERO is to get it into your head that you are in control of how the game runs, the system is there to support you regardless of how you decide to go about it and while the default, out of the box, experience is number heavy, there is no need for the at the table experience to be that way. There was a cool thread about character sheets, probably more than one, where a few people shared sheets that they had created themselves to provide to players. I am an evangelist on this as I consider the character sheet to be the GUI through which players access the game. As for preparation - I regularly have a light touch with all but the most important NPCs. I will have them listed as 1-hit, 2-hit or 3-hit opponents and will riff on those values if a PC is exceptionally strong or weak. My players claim not to notice whether I am using a light or detailed villain. Doc

the absolute most effective remedy against in game abuse is to employ the same effects against the players that they employ in character. I started that rule with poisoned weapons in D&D. "if you guys think it is cool to use it, expect everyone else to have a similar perspective". Pretty quickly the only people that used poison were the truly evil NPCs. :-)

I think heat sink becomes more interesting when you have an ability set built around a central power source and they all contribute to the heat generated and there is a limit on the players maxing out their abilities at all times because overuse might cause them to be unavailable. It is indeed a limitation but one that should be shared across those using the same technologies. Indeed, the heat sink might also be influenced by others using energy weapons in a simple attempt to overwhelm the heat sink...but that would also come down to design decisions.

Christopher I think you meant to say that "in some systems" heat sink is entirely synonymous with Endurance. It does not have to be and there are solid cases for it not being. Of course, in HERO, not even END has to used to reflect Endurance, it is just most conveniently positioned to play that role. :-) Doc

Heatsink should be a problem. There are so many different things that might relate to that and it is probably at its least impact when it is on a single power. It is different from other use limitations in that it limits how often you can use that power repeatedly, even if you have the END or charges to do so. If the weapon has overheated it does not matter if you have more bullets (charges) or the energy to fire it (END). The question is, how you reflect that, in game, where the player feels the limitation. In my head I have a system where each shot of the weapon costs two charges, one used, one converted to heat. If the remaining charges equals the heat pool then the weapon overheats and cannot fire. The question is, how slowly would the charges in the heat pool returning to the charge pool have to be to make that a limitation to the player. With 16 charges you have a decent leeway - you could fire five times before you got to almost parity (six charges left with five heat) If you fire six times the weapon has overheated. The next question would be whether, once overheated, you can fire again when the balance has been restored or when you have no more heat. Player should be able to choose either but the second is more limiting than the first. I reckon this could be replicated in END Reserve simply by giving the player a "heat pool", doubling effective END cost of powers and putting the second END into heat. The recovery of the heat pool could cost points and reflect how quickly the cooldown takes. Something like that perhaps?

Could you build it as a Burn-out? Start with burn-out at 8-, each use raises the chance until it overheats (burns out). You then have the refresh written as (perhaps) five minutes per point raised before burnout. This would mean if you were unlucky and it burns out early that you get it back online more quickly. You could be meaner and make every one on the burn-out recover a step on the time chart... It is a custom limitation but it has the advantage (ha!) of actually being a limitation in the rules... Doc

I dont understand what the problem is here. Why are we suggesting way out ways of tinkering with speed? Why not just give the players more points? If they spend the points on Speed - then it was a problem that you have solved by giving them the points to buy it - if they buy other things then there is no point in making speed more complicated....

It is sounding like a very legitimate use of EDM. Sean Waters would have loved it. :-) You create a gateway to a pocket dimension where you heal. The gateway is tied to a physical focus. You do nothing but heal and are effectively incommunicado and unaware of the outside. yup. EDM for me...

EDM sounds like the answer because it answers the immediate question of how you "move into an object and out of the current reality". The question I see is, what do you want to be able to do when you are in there? If you are simply contained then I see EDM as the perfect solution. If you want to do more than that then it may become less and less the right power. Doc

Whenever players use anything, within the rules, that makes it difficult for me or takes a style I dont want in the game I tell them. If that changes nothing then I tell them that if they continue to use that tactic, then I too will use it. When the tables are turned they hate that used against them, It wasn't CV abuses for me, it was poison in an early RuneQuest game. They used it all the time until their opponents began to use it all the time. After several player characters died because of poisoned blades, they complained that it was not realistic for everyone to use poison all the time. I replied that it was not realistic for them to use poison all the time. They were using it for purely tactical advantage and therefore it was fine for me to use it too. I told them that if they foreswore the use of poison except for particular purposes then I would not use it unless their opponent was particularly evil. The use of poison would donote that inclination. :-) This was a learning step for me and my players. No major arguments but mutual agreement not to be too extreme about useful aspects of the game and coming to a mutual understanding. For the Kobold player, I would ensure that he was almost constantly faced with opponents who were also small enough to get the DCV bonus and also utilised the defensive benefits of the combat system so that their combats were a frustrating miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss while everyone else got on with the business of fighting properly. It would be easier to mop up the kobold if he was isolated and his opponents worked tactically to attack him as a team - make him dive for cover with someone else waiting to target him on the same segment while he was prone... :-) Doc