Doc Democracy

Yup. ?. Obviously there are some powers that are purely there for colour purposes, but my Blast Standard is a decent way for me to convey effectiveness to players.

There were a few links in the early posts but The Great System Purge has cleaned those. My sheets are all a bit customised and focussed on the groups I was running things for. Will see if I can dig up an example or two.

It was the very next line, checking the utility of a power against the utility of an equivalent active point spend on Blast. ?

Thinking purely in point terms, I agree. Actually putting the soul into the gem as a matter of transport leaves the victim open to communication, to being visited and possibly to being busted out. The roleplaying opportunities of it being a destination rather than a physical state are HUGE!!

But this more than makes up for it!!! ?

I am devastated!! ?

There is a case to be made for using extra-dimensional movement, usableon others....

I think this kind of stuff comes into its own more in mystic/horror/fantasy type games. The most immediate example would be a demon walking about in the form of a human. They might look and feel like a human to sight and touch but to other senses they would look like their real scaly form with mandatory chaos spiky bits. All kinds of auras, astral forms and other things would depend on the ability of those who can see beyond the usual. To me, Images, self only is wholly self-delusional. ? Doc

It will be a real loss to the community. Is it possible (and while I am expecting a simple no here, I am hoping for more) that the vast majority of images etc are associated with NGD and that we might purge NGD without losing the real gaming content that I would have thought the site was here to support?

It is not a terrible question but we live in a different world. I would like to think there will be more people playing the game that I want to play but I think if I want to GM, I will always find players if the game pitch is good enough. I grew up in a time when, if there were no copies of a book in my local store then it was essentially impossible to buy it. Now the internet has changed everything. Right now, I can take a PDF to a local store and have a hard copy printed. I can have 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th Edition printed as often as I want. I will always have access to those books. It is likely that anyone that wants the book will always be able to purchase a copy and print it out. I do not think it is likely that games will ever disappear any more. The system will always be around. I think this means that game companies do have to re-think how they survive - re-selling old editions is easy. Doing new things can be easier but when all the old editions are available, are there other things they need to do? I think that the driver to produce a new edition - rather than re-print the old stuff a company would tart things up and publish a new edition. If the need to have hard copy reduces, why go to the effort of doing a new edition. This is probably doubly true of HERO where there are lots of things that are essentially the same?? I think the things that come out of this kind of discussion are the kinds of things that might sell, and thus might motivate talented people to produce text. As such I think it is good to talk. We might not necessarily change anyone's mind and talk past each other but it might inspire something the rest of will buy some time down the line. It is especially good to talk when the discourse is polite, even when it gets robust. So much more chance of positive outcomes. Also, what else would I do when I was sitting at home? Just watch TV, much more interesting to interact with folk all over the world who share an interest with me. ? Doc

Even though Duke said he was not going to peek, I don’t believe him... the phrase “no matter how much maths we do” reads fine to me....

This. Fantasy HERO Complete does not deliver a game, it delivers a nuance of the HERO system focussed more on designing a fantasy game than ANY genre. It narrows the options. What it does not do is deliver you Thieves World, or Glorantha, or Dark Sun. It makes none of the design decisions that would deliver the ‘feel’ you are grasping for. I completely understand your concern of everything feeling the same, that to me is the work of the GM. You work under the hood, taking the infrastructure and then you apply a skin over that which you present to the players. If you are doing a good job, the players are not choosing between a 2D6-1 killing attack with 1” range and a 1.5D6 killing attack with AP. Instead they are in a blacksmiths deciding whether they want to buy the Dwarven Long Axe or the Th’Kreen Glass Duelling Blade. The stats might influence that but the magic is right there. If the book was doing a good job, then the GMs job would be to understand what is under the hood and help players experience the created world in a consistent way. Because it is HERO underneath, the GM would be able to tell the player that while this blacksmith does not have the Th’Kreen Glass Lance (which delivers the same wicked cuts but at a range) he does know of a Th’Kreen glass maker who might be willing to deal with humankind (and can build the stats consistent with everything else, knowing just how much advantage access to such a weapon might give over other players etc). Doc

Christopher, you are not reading properly. Sean said that to pass through a small hole while looking like something else to sonar, which neither Desolid or Shrinking would do, but is easily achievable via shapeshift.

Good grief Duke - you churn out the words!! ? I understand what you are saying. There was a very deliberate decision made in 5th Edition to try and clarify what the HERO System is, a generic set of mechanics that could be utilised to deliver a game in multiple genres. Those genres were then described (with guidance on how to apply the HERO System) as how to play a game within those genres. That is where things diverge - the actual rule options in one set of books and how those rules might be applied in a different set of books. The Big Blue Book combined the HERO System with the Champions genre book. I reckon 5th Edition and Champions covers the same ground but better. 6th Edition further evolved the rules, breaking things down so that different genres might be more closely emulated. I think the big mistake people make with HERO is that they think they need to use the rules that exist or have watertight arguments on what they will or will not allow players to use. The genre books missed a trick in that they did not begin with an overview of the things that they would utilise and the things that they would gloss over (for the betterment of the game experience). HERO suffers when the GM does not put in enough thought into what they will and will not utilise in the game they want to run. Hugh's vision of games Powered by HERO would do that for the GM. In first edition Policeman 14 or less covered much of the detail that might take 10 lines of skills in the usual 6th Edition game - separating out all of the elements of being a policeman. If you want transfer - you know how it is built in 6th Edition - you can simply write 3D6 END Transfer. You know how it works. If you want instant change, you can write instant change - you know how it works. There is no NEED to play the maths games. There is no requirement but it means that you, as GM, have (if you want) a greater insight into how everything hangs together. 6th is only huge because it contains shedloads of design information - things I would scour magazine supplements to gain are all in 6th Edition as standard. I reckon I play HERO. I will bet I dont play pure 6th, there will be elements of almost every edition I have played and forgotten/ignored changes in later editions because I like how it plays. Would I like a Golden Age book that does not facilitate me to write a Golden Age campaign but delivers a version of the rules that push the bold strokes of four colour comics, broad skills that have little detail and a fast and loose way of playing? Absolutely. Huge time saver. Would I buy a game that better emulated Bond - giving talents that are bought as black boxes and delivers the feel of a spy game (possibly writing out the SPD chart as an explicit thing because everyone has the same SPD by design)? Most probably. I reckon my group would love that game. The other reason I would buy those games ahead of other systems that do the same is that I would know they were both built on a consistent base and that,with a little bit of work, I could consistently add elements to those games that I wanted, properly costed. In other games it would simply be changes made by sticking a finger in the air. Dont peer too closely at the detail. Pull back, ignore the stuff you don't want, aren't interested in. The system is robust enough to cope with that. 6th provides you with more options than previous editions, no one says that you have to use them all... Doc

Interesting because I now find Shape Shift to be a pretty straightforward power, though I went through a lot of confusion before arriving at my enlightened state. I really like the idea that, if bought cheaply people with different senses might 'see' the real you and that it provides for all kinds of stuff. I can really get into the detail of that. Whether detailing that detail means that it ends up being too expensive for what it is, is another matter completely.... I sometimes think that we have driven detail into the system and that has caused some inflation because differences often have to be reflected in point costs for us to believe it is 'real'. For some powers, that makes them far more costly in points when compared to more straightforward powers. I like to use the Blast Standard. How useful is this power compared to an equivalent amount of points spent in Blast. Obviously this is a relatively unsophisticated comparison but it is a beginning in thinking about costs.

I have had all the emails but never dug out the time to go looking at the videos. Maybe I should.

I'm up for re-classification. I have broken things into four groups, the first impacts on the starting rolls for skills, the second is all about acting/reacting and how effective that might be, the third is about the condition of the character and the last is outside combat because those numbers are routinely advantaged in some way where other numbers are not. Characteristics = STR, DEX, CON, INT, EGO and PRE Combat numbers = OCV, DCV, OMCV, DMCV, SPD Health indicators = STUN, BODY, END, REC Defence numbers = PD, ED, PowD, Mental D, Flash D (all potentially advantaged with resistant, hardened etc). You think breaking them up into groups like this would help in presentation terms?

I looked at a three level version instead. +1/4 to convert 1s and 2s to 3s. +1/2 to have only 5s and 6s and +3/4 to have max damage. I thought it was interesting in how it came out compared to additional dice of damage. At 1 level of increased STUN, you get a mean STUN of 42 (varying between 30 and 60) rather than a mean of 42 (varying between 12 and 72). At 2 levels of increased STUN you get a mean of 52 (varying between 50 and 60) rather than a mean of 52 (varying between 15 and 90). At 3 levels of increased STUN you get 60 STUN rather than a mean of 61 (varying between 18 and 105). This actually works in point sense - you sacrifice the potential of higher results for guaranteed lower ones. It also suggests that +3/4 is a decent value for maximum STUN damage (it also works if you also added in BODY - full damage delivers 20 BODY as opposed to 18). I had never considered an advantage to deliver full damage before and would (ad hoc) have come up with at least +1 if not higher... Doc

I will resist the temptation to derail the thread. I have mentioned in other places things that I think would bring the system up to date and be more modern. I am not sure what I would really pull for but there is no unifying mechanic for things in the system - the mechanic for skills is different from the system for skills resolution (even when the skill is actively opposed), the speed chart (one of my favourite aspects of the game) creaks a little and there might be some thought on how that might work in a modern system. Even D&D has upgraded and modernised how it goes about things (such as the use of advantage - taking the best of two rolls, etc) and I think it would behove HERO to recognise it probably did not get everything right in 1980 and have a good think about how the mechanics of the system might be brought up to date and deliver a system that better reflects the accumulated gaming knowledge of three decades. Doc

OK. There is a community here that has grown up with multiple versions of this system. Each of us will have a golden period they remember that makes the system at that time shine in their brain, it is also, likely, the time when they had the greatest knowledge of a ruleset. For me that was probably just prior to and after publication of the BBB. I had a group of five players and we played multiple times per week and lived superheroes, burning through a huge number of 4th Ed published adventures. I have played HERO much less since then but despite enjoying a number of other systems, this is the only game forum I frequent regularly. This is the only system I think in. I have picked up each edition as it is published, every publisher needs to update its ruleset to keep it fresh, to make it new for new audiences and to provide something for long-standing fans to buy. HERO is distinct in that it does not have lots of black box surprises that can be added to new editions to make it new and shiny and different. It simply seeks to achieve a better mechanical balance between the various powers and effects it provides. Characteristics were one of the remaining black boxes, 6th Edition removed those and made more archetypes available without going through the sellback contortions that figured characteristics would require to get, for example a gymnast that was a poor combatant, and to remove the incentive for almost every player to buy raised CON and STR due to their figured characteristic value. What drives the impression of complexity is the amount of explanation and example provided. Champions Complete shows that the explanation can be removed to expose quite a simple system that is not hugely different from its roots, probably just more flexible and balanced. I do think that Steve missed a trick. The focus was on character creation, something each edition has done. What remains almost the same as those very first poorly typeset rulebooks is the core system. It remains a sophisticated point buy system resting upon an ancient game, I think that some of the rules could have been updated and made the core system as sophisticated as the character creation has become. I think, mechanically, 6th is the best in character creation. I think it is a tough call when you talk gameplay after character creation as that has not significantly changed. Doc

Well, if you like the whole idea of STUN multiples, why not allow a STUN multiple to roll up the value of the attack. With 1 STUN multiple, all 1s become 2s. With 2 STUN multiples, all 1s and 2s become 3s. With 3 STUN multiples, all 1s, 2s and 3s, become 4s. This really buffs the attacks, you slowly ramp up the STUN, you also get a bit of a BODY lift with the first multiple but nothing thereafter until you hit 5 multiples where you essentially do MAX damage all the time. You could, of course, say that rolling up the 1s only affects STUN. not BODY... Doc

You missed a little clause on the end there, I think. ", if that adds to the fun of the game" As with everything else, there is a point where more accuracy increases the admin overhead to such a point that no-one wants to play the game. Some games make a feature of this (I am looking at you Chivalry and Sorcery, among others) and some groups absolutely prefer it if their gameplay focuses there. Others will absolutely hate it. So I think it is a decent additional colour thing and belongs in a complete game where the focus might be here but it should not be seen as something needed everywhere and I would be concerned were it to be in the main rules where it would add an additional layer of bullet-proof-ness. Doc

I always thought that the way to differentiate guns would be to build little adjuncts to the main power (killing attack) rather than trying to change/amend the main power. I like the idea of a gun having more "stopping power" by giving it additional KB or a slight TK boost to push someone back. I like the idea of a gun with shock having a bit of NND. I like the idea of a gun with a reputation "possibly the most powerful handgun in the world" giving added PRE. This might do far more to provide colour than other systems can manage. ? Doc

Well, you have the right approach, you know the ultimate aim is to reduce DCV, that is, as you say, most likely a drain in mechanical terms. You might consider, instead, a bonus to PRE attack. You need PRE+20 to cause an opponent not to act for a full phase and be reduced to 1/2 DCV. If you read that instead as causing an opponent to dive a particular way, setting up a follow-up attack, then this fits the bill. You could make it all or nothing, the opponent either does it or does not, no minor effects. It is apropos as opponents with greater PRE are less affected while those with power defence have no greater ability to avoid the effects (which they would have with a drain). For most base characters, that means a roll of 30 on a PRE attack - needs 9D6 to achieve that on average. If the character has PRE 15 and can count on the gun (violent action, +1d6) countering context (in combat, -1d6), then you need +6d6 to give you nine dice. The rules allow for +1d6 for an appropriate interaction skill (+2d6 If roll is made by more than half). I might as GM allow 5d6, requiring you to make some kind of attack roll to get the extra dice with a chance of a bonus for a good attack roll. This is feels like a better mechanic than the drain, IMHO anyway. Doc

To me, this is a complication. Every so often a hunted turns up. At some point the hunter will kill the hero. Probably at the end of an adventure arc, at which point the player gets to build a new character with gained experience (a novel version of the radiation accident). As GM, I would not expect to see any powers on the character sheet for this.