Doc Democracy

Re: Common 6E House Rules I have tended to use increments of BODY rather than 10 STUN to take people down the recovery levels. That means that big bruiser bricks have even more incentive to buy up their BODY - it gets them back into the fight faster after they have gone down. Doc

Re: Sample Convention Character Sheet It looks good. I love seeing people working to make the GUI between the system and the player better. The only picky thing I see now is that beside STR you indicate the END cost as [6] and in the power descriptions you write END 6. I like the [6] because I am used to it but I think that new users will find the END 6 more friendly. Good work here, IMO. Doc

Re: Sample Convention Character Sheet Yes. Do you need the actual value. I realise it is a biggie but I almost never use the value when I have all the effects there. However, if you do not want the sheet to differ too much from published sheets this might be a step too far. Yeah - fewer words are usually better. Doc

Re: Sample Convention Character Sheet I tried to look at the sheet through the eyes of someone who has not played before and I am assuming you want a sheet that people will play without having to ask too many questions. I wonder whether you need the values for the characteristics? If you took that column out you could write the name of the characteristics in full. I would probably have had a box clearly marked COMBAT with all of the relevant numbers there, rather than spread through the sheet - so almost half of the characteristics and skill levels. Do you need to indicate the value of the limitations on powers? Might newbies be wondering what those numbers mean? Do you need to put "(Sight Group)" for IR and UV perception? Will it matter to the players? Do you need the game jargon for the invulnerability? I am presuming that "Generic Set Of Super Hero Abilities:" is a mjor heading with other abilities below it. But "Resistant (+½) applied to PD plus Resistant (+½) applied to ED" could be replaced with "this makes PD and ED work against killing attacks as well as normal attacks". Having said all that - it looks nice and has many fewer numbers than the stock character sheet. Doc

Re: 4th Edition, Independent... Yeah. Especially if you take the point that by taking limitations (and accepting the discount for that) you are telling the GM you expect it to be used at som epoint. So in effect you are getting a bonus early on for something you intend to be irrevocably taken away from you during the campaign. Doc

Re: Day after Ragnarok I will let you know what I do with it. My first thoughts (which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me) will be to decide how I want the character sheet to look. I am thinking of getting something that looks WWII with a few twists here and there. Then I want to think about the stories - I am going to spoiler my thoughts as I trust my players who sometimes look here not to open the spoiler! Doc

Re: Day after Ragnarok This would be a NO then. Doc

Re: Unsure how, why, where... or _whether_ to start! I would advise that you hold off on buying Hero Designer. I am not saying that it is a bad thing - I find it a very useful thing for all the reasons above. What I have found though is that newcomers to the system tend to dive into the software and get characters that use options that they do not understand or that work in ways they did not expect because they did not understand the rules that HD was implenting. I would advise some time, putting in the effort in understanding the rules. Once you have a grasp of those in your head then HD facilitates you using those to create characters. I would advise that you do not give the books to your players at the get go. get a handle on the things that you want to include in your game and build the characters yourself until you feel proficient at it. For example - your first characters might all have the same SPD - that way there is no need to consult the SPD chart - everyone goes four times a turn and act in DEX order. You might want to keep things to basic kinds of powers etc that you slowly develop and make more complex as both you and your players become more familiar with the rules, encourage vanilla superheroes - basic energy blaster, basic brick etc - to begin with then allow redesigns that make use of more 'advanced' rules like No Normal Defence and Megascale and multiply advantaged and limited powers. You might even want to restrict or simply not use power frameworks at the beginning. Some people might advise you to ignore point totals at the start until you become more proficient in design - just get the power levels right by 'feel' and play-testing the options. My own peccadillo is that you make your own character sheet. In play, HERO is as simple or simpler than many other RPGs. If you give your players sheets full of numbers, they will want to understand them all. As such, I look to reduce the numbers present on the character sheets to the minimum needed to play the game (STUN, END, CV etc). I also look to add as much descriptive text to powers and remove the actual game terms and advantages and limitations - that means the sheet is explaining what the power is, what it does and providing only the necessary game numbers. If your players can interpret the text and numbers at a glance then they will be happier playing the game and will, soon enough, begin asking you for the advanced options rather than moaning about how difficult it all is. Doc

Was wondering where to post this but I think Pulp is the closest fit . Anyone done any work on this? I am going to be running a game and not hugely inspired by the presentation so far...

Re: The Reveal I was wondering whether I should give one player each session (on a rotation basis) a 'get out of jail free' card. It would allow them to twist the plot to get them past a blockage in the story by giving me a good explanation. I don't think it would be valuable in climactic confrontations but might defeat or circumvent any of the other various obstacles they might encounter. Doc

Re: Basic Rulebook The basic rulebook is a decent way in. The sourcebooks are heavly weighted to indicating how these various genres should/could be run and the variations on them. There are decent sections in the sourcebooks that discuss how you might use certain powers and skills when running different varieties of the genre being discussed. As such, sure - the Basic Rulebook will give you a good enough understanding of the system to see what is being discussed in even the rule heavy parts of the Champions book but I would expect even someone who knew nothing about the HERO system a good understanding of the superhero genre and how to run games in the various sub-genres of superheroes. Doc

Re: (Equipment) Axe vs. Sword This is an interesting addition to what you normally see in package deals. It is very useful for GMs in putting together NPCs on the fly and, as you say, because they are standardised, the players have a good idea of what they will be facing. Repped for innovation! Doc

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I cannot really talk too much about time investment - I am on page 670 of Anathema by Neal Stephenson and enjoying it. A doorstop with poor editing but even so I have been able to read it on the train to and from work in 50 page chunks.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... My problem with fantasy is the absolute requirement by publishers that it be epic trilogies. Every fantasy series seems to be predicated on various types of people coming together to save the world - still milking the LotR formula. If I now get even a hint that a story is a fantasy epic in three (or more) parts, I refuse to buy it. I only get such things when others buy me presents (and then I have to read it - would be rude not to! :-) ) I would love to have the short story route involving people in life or death situations that do not necessarily involve the survival of the Kingdom or the World using decvent fantasy tropes, intersting exploration of the use of magic on society etc. I would even read series of these but they need not involve the same people, the same stories or even the same author! Kind of like the shared world stuff for Sanctuary. Doc

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... The whole sequence has to be read in the context of his leprosy. Successful novelist (possibly nice guy, nice wife with child - all a bit vague and fuzzy) gets leprosy. Wife leaves him, takes child and he gets depressed. now leprosy and depression are poor relatives - you dont take care of yourself and so dont notice bruises etc which, with leprosy, result in bits of you rotting and falling off. After losing two fingers due to this kind of thing, he gets his head round his disease, learns to live as an outcast in his local community and learns how to survive. That does not make him a nice person but he has to be independent of people because in modern society the leper is still an outcast. When he suffers a head injury and wakes up in the Land then this is immediate wish fulfillment. He has feeling back - he can get better. It is fantasy that is dangerous to himn because if he does not keep himself grounded in the real world he will not survive, his leprosy will destroy him. The rape is early in the book - he has feeling back the girl is the representation of everything that is dangerous to him (it was her who healed him using hurtloam) and so he lashes out at this fantasy and everything in it. It is just as easy to read this as a tortured and diseased man fighting with the fantasies in his head to allow himself to survive as it is to focus on the upfront fantasy story. Doc

Re: (Equipment) Axe vs. Sword I am trying to think how I would implement Tesuji's scheme of things. So. First go - Core Game Rule options Damage 1. Any character who has access to a weapon can deal 1.5D6 killing attacks. 2. Any character who has access to a weapon can do 1/2D6 killing attack and +1/2D6 killing per relevant skill level with said weapon Weapons 1. Each weapon will have something that adds to the effectiveness of the weapon but give it some unique flavour but all weapons have the same bonus structure 2. Each weapon class (light, medium, heavy) will have something that adds to the effectiveness of the weapon with lightest weapons adding least 3. Each weapon has several unique features that can be accessed depending on the number of relevant skill levels This is an entirely different way to go about weapons in HERO but I think a good one for High Fantasy and some other genres... I like options 2 and 3 above. This would mean that my thief, if he was carrying daggers and had several skill levels could decide to apply some of the levels to increased damage and some to accessing stuff like range and multiple attacks while the fighter with the axe and the same number of skill levels might be applying them all into added damage. The trick would be setting out all of the options and how they might interact value wise... Interesting concept... Doc PS: and a worthwhile post to mark 2500 posts to boot!

Re: 6E Characteristics Maximum? One of the options discussed previously in looking at changing how different races tend to different characteristic totals was changing the costs. Obviously the most obvious way to change the costs are to increase or decrease the base cost - so if you make STR cost 1/2 cp then the character will tend to higher STR totals than normal, if you make the cost 2 cp then the character will tend to lower STR totals. You could probably achieve finer definition by associating limitations and advantages based on race - so an elf gets STR x1/2, INT +1, REC +1/2 and CON x3/4 (numbers made up with no real thought for the purposes of example). Without having to impose characteristic maxima or anything else, you immediately get differences in characteristic profiles based entirely on what the GM expects the races to be. Obviously if you want a low STR, low CON, high INT, high REC character then you will probably opt for an elf rather than stick to a human but that means most of the player characters with such a profile will be an elf - exactly what the GM wanted to promote in his/her game.... Doc

Re: Sherlock Holmes (movie 2010) My problem with the movie was that it fell between two stools - gothic and pulp. Going home I realised part of my dissatisfaction was that they had mapped Holmes onto the Batman. If you called it Gotham by Gaslight then I think I'd have loved it a lot more... Doc

Re: HERO SYSTEM MARTIAL ARTS -- The Final Count Remember people, that is a GUESS. It could very well be longer than that... Doc

Re: "Rolling a Critical" Hey!

Re: "Rolling a Critical" Is there a reason you went for x1.5 and x2 damage? I think that I would have been more likely to opt for additional dice or perhaps defence negation. The options in HERO are extensive... If you could bear the effort - different weapons could achieve different kinds of criticals Doc

Re: A little help for one of my players One of the esential bits of doing such a character is using music that EVERYONE recognises and appreciates and being able to play it very quickly. What are the classic songs? A lot of the have been mentioned above but I thought about what music lingers and is heard again and again - iconic tunes like American Pie, House of the Rising Sun, Hound Dog, Rat Trap and Psycho Killer. The use of these can be varied but the key thing (IMO) is identifiability. Doc

Re: "Rolling a Critical" The thing that you also want to think about with respect to criticals is what you want to achieve with them. It is not immediately obvious to many people but criticals are detrimental to PCs. However players (like most normal people) love getting something for nothing (or a prize for doing well - even it is is a random roll). I'd be inclined to limit critical attacks to PCs and named villains - the important ones (and even then, their critical opportunities should come at critical junctures in the story). I might even have a red card that I could throw in the middle of the table to indicate to players that the villains were now capable of scoring criticals. Should criticals simply be extra damage or should they be something else? Possibilities include inflicting disabilities or impairments, causing a scar or other imperfection, possibly even breaking an item or a power. All of these are accomplishable within the system - you need to think what is going to add most to your game and deliver most fun to the players. Doc

Re: How to Build? : Ignore Pain

Re: Herb that heals 'Impairing Effects' or 'Disabling Effects' Hmm. I'm trying to remember which game it was that required two kinds of healing - I think there was something in D&D (imagine that) where you could resurrect someone but if you had not previously healed the damage that caused the death then they would immediately die again. If you repair someone's sight without first healing the damage then the disablement occurs all over again. It all depends on how crunchy you want your magic to be - HERO can do the whole regeneration thing in one - using Regeneration or it can do it differently. In a low fantasy game I like differently - in High Fantasy I prefer regeneration. Doc