How is Fantasy Hero like D&D or different?

[aprilfool]

i played D&D long ago but never Fantasy Hero yet - in what ways are they alike? or different?

[Hyper-Man]

Fantasy Hero is Genre Book and has several 5th edition settings books available (which include basic magic systems).  Like HERO in general it is designed as a toolkit to allow a GM to make a personalized game.  Depending on what version of D&D you are familiar with certain parts will seem familiar.  Characteristics in HERO at low low levels (>20) are equivalent to AD&D 1st Edition.  Many Talents will seem very familiar if you've played D&D v3.x (feats).  The biggest things to get used to is that mechanics matter in HERO.  The Special Effect is not nearly as important.  There is no direct translation of Hit Points in HERO. If you plan on being the GM, you will probably want to get a setting book and a spell book (if Magic will play an important role in your game world). 

[Jhaierr]

Fantasy Hero and the Hero System itself (you'll need the PDFs of the 6th edition rules or you can use the rules from Champions Complete) allows you to play any sort of fantasy genre that you like. Sword and sorcery in a gritty world? No problem. Epic, continent-sweeping campaign? No problem. Magic-sparse intrigue à la Game of Thrones? No problem. Dimension-hopping, high powered fantasy? No problem.

 

Hero allows you to create and tweak how everything works, and Fantasy Hero provides several example genres of magic systems for you to start with. It also provides tons of information about different types of campaigns, elements of fantasy roleplaying, weapons, armor, and all sorts of related data.

[Christopher]

- D&D did the mistake of not letting Armor reduce damage. Wich meant a ton of Rules was needed to compensate for htis (like the saving throws and evasion like abilities). It also meant that combat was mostly "whittling down HP". HERO does not has this bug - armor reduces damage - wich makes stuff like saving throws unessesary.

- Hero does not like absolute effects like "Attack always hits", "Instant death" and the like. But then again Hero deson't needs those to be balanced.

- the closest equivalent for a D&D turn would propably be a Hero Phase.

- every +1/-1 in HERO is roughly equivalent to +2/-2 in D&D. Hero has a bit less granularity, especially in low powered areas.

- balancing Weapon Fighting, Defenses and magic can be a bit of a problem. But there are guidelines in the Core Rulebook that should help.

- balancing Armed Figthing and Magic can be a problem. There are several approaches to solve this - like the Equipment Pool form the APG and the various Magic Systems of Fantasy Hero. Or just playing low/no magic setting for the start.

 

Things you might need:

You need the Core Rules (6E1 and 6E2, might be avalible as a bundle). Alterantively Champions Complete can be used as Core book (but it is somewhat more focussed on the Superheroic genre). 80-95% the rules for every genre are in these books (a bit like a mix of D&D Player Handbook and GM Handbook). Genre books cover whatever the core rules could not.

Optional: Fantasy Hero (the Genre book). Also has subrules and tips for the genre. Highly Advisable.

Optional: Hero Designer. Programm to create Charactersheets. Might be less needed for Fantasy then for Superheroic games. Only avalible from Online Store, not 3rd party retailers.

Optional: Hero System Grimoire* - prewritten spells.

Optional: Hero System Marital Arts (HSMA)* - covers martial arts from no-magic Fantasy too superheroic and everything in between.

Opional: There used to be a Hero Book for Monsters* (thinkg of Monster manual), but I cannot find the name. Alternatively only the HD Pack would be enough.

Optional: There are also several 1-2$ Suplements from steve long for a specific thematic, like [Theme] Magic. Or about Skeletons/Demons.*

 

*The good thing about Hero is that you can build everythig yourself. The bad thing is that you have to build almost everything yourself, unless you have book/HD pack that had the work already done for you.

[L. Marcus]

Of course, one of the big differences between D&D and HERO is that HERO doesn't do levels (unless you really want). And HERO doesn't do character classes (unless you really want) -- you design each character freely within the guidelines that exist for a given campaign, buying characteristics and abilities with a budget of points.

[Greywind]

Well, it's certainly one opinion.

- D&D did the mistake

[Chris Goodwin]

In the general idea behind the system, D&D is geared to have the rules tell you what you can do, and everything else is up to the GM.  In Fantasy Hero and the HERO System in general, the GM instead tells you what you can't do.  This does mean the GM has to do a little more work up front to determine how they want, for instance, magic to work, but the advantage is that you can have magic work exactly the way you want it to.  

 

With Fantasy Hero, you can do pretty much everything you can do with D&D, and a whole lot more.  The reverse isn't true.  

 

As far as rules are concerned, I'd say that besides the whole different polyhedral dice thing, probably the biggest differences are in the way characters increase in power.  For instance, in D&D a 10th level character will have on average 10 times as many hit points as a 1st level character.  The equivalent in Fantasy Hero won't necessarily have many more "hit points" (BODY and STUN) but will be well rounded and experienced in many other ways.  

 

Oh, and once you've learned Fantasy Hero, you've also learned the all of the rules you need for playing superheroes, or galaxy spanning science fiction, or cyberpunk, or post-apocalyptic, or gritty modern day, or pulp adventures.  

[Kraven Kor]

As in all things HERO, a lot of the differences depend greatly on how the GM decides to run things, which optional or house rules they go for, etc.

 

Some folks have essentially translated D&D to HERO wholesale, keeping concepts like levels and classes, others have stayed true to HERO's custom built characters method.  

 

Fantasy HERO that I run, for instance, tends to be a little more gritty and realistic; characters don't shrug off an axe wound with a prayer and a pull of a potion.  But the HERO rules can have just as much healing and magic as D20 if you want it to.

Basically, HERO lets you decide on the level of dramatic reality you want, and gives the GM much more control over their games, but this comes at the price of more preparatory work and much deeper, more complex system mechanics.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Both games have a considerable level of combat detail, but in different ways.

 

One not-at-all-subtle difference is that experienced Fantasy Hero PCs are significantly more fragile than the equivalent PC in D&D. A D&D PC at high enough level stands a decent chance of continuing on with no impairment of combat abilities if breathed on by a dragon or hit with a sword wielded by Orcus (one of D&D's demon lords), and a swarm of orcs poses little difficulty for them.

 

This is not true in Fantasy Hero. Everybody must be careful when facing a dragon: surviving its attacks would be problematic for anybody. You would have to be superhuman to not be bothered (at the very least) by having an entire tribe of orcs attack you.

 

Spellcasters can be significantly less powerful in Fantasy Hero than their D&D equivalents, depending on how the GM decides players pay for spells. Some Fantasy Hero magic systems reduce the cost of spells, while others do not -- in the latter case mages can have a few spells at most. Players can in theory design their own spells, with GM permission. And if the GM gives permission players can build their mages with Power Frameworks, including the do-almost-anything Variable Power Pool -- giving them enormous flexibility at the cost of limiting their raw power.

[Lawnmower Boy]

The basic answer is that Fantasy Hero is adaptable. Most people who play Fantasy Hero come away determined to get away from what they see as the problems of D&D. The difficulty with that approach is that the vast majority of RPGers consider the "problems" of D&D to be, in fact, its virtues.

 

Well, good news. You can replicate the perceived strengths of the D&D experience in FH. (And I  hope that that's the way that FHC goes.) And then you can build on it. 

 

Back when I was 19, I thought of what I then considered to be just about the coolest question ever: "This whole Descent into the Underearth" is the coolest thing ever! Drow and Mind Flayers and alternate universes, and heck, I guess Kou-Toans and Jermlaines, too. But what if the X-Men tried to do it?" In fact, I still think that this was a cool question. I admit that not everyone does, but I think that if I extended the range of options to Space Marines, or Mechas, or wuxia fighters, or, well, you get the picture, I would eventually draw a spark of enthusiasm from anyone but the most jaded imagination.

 

D&D won't let you do this. It just doesn't offer the tools. That's not necessarily a bad design decision. Fantasy Hero, on the other hand, can. That was its basic design decision. Your Fantasy Hero campaign doesn't have to be able to play just like D&D, but it can be set up that way. The virtue of the system is that you can then decide that you want to stretch it in a new direction..

[Michael Hopcroft]

During the d20 boom of the early aughts, innumerable third-party publishers attempted to adapt the then-current D&D mechanics to just about every genre imaginable. That of course is still going on (once the Open Game License genie was let out of the bottle there was no putting it back in, much to WOTC's dismay). The results were at best variable. Attempts to graft mechanics for superpowers, mecha, martial arts powers and the like onto D&D had middling success. Most of those attempts are largely forgotten now, sometimes deservedly so (in retrospect, the d20 versions of BESM and Silver Age Sentinels were, from a creative perspective, colossal blunders). Even Wizards' own attempt at a modern-and-scifi d20 game looks questionable in hindsight.

 

The current and upcoming editions of D&D have more restrictive licenses, in hopes of avoiding that. But, as I mentioned, the genie is out of the bottle -- many more game systems, old and new, are legitimately "open content", and many more have been reverse-engineered as dubiously open content. Hero has so far avoided that fate, which is probably fortunate if you don't want the Hero market flooded with mediocre content.

[Vondy]

Both games have a considerable level of combat detail, but in different ways.

 

One not-at-all-subtle difference is that experienced Fantasy Hero PCs are significantly more fragile than the equivalent PC in D&D. A D&D PC at high enough level stands a decent chance of continuing on with no impairment of combat abilities if breathed on by a dragon or hit with a sword wielded by Orcus (one of D&D's demon lords), and a swarm of orcs poses little difficulty for them.

 

This is not true in Fantasy Hero. Everybody must be careful when facing a dragon: surviving its attacks would be problematic for anybody. You would have to be superhuman to not be bothered (at the very least) by having an entire tribe of orcs attack you.

 

In thinking about this, it occurs to me that the things we often do to make a fantasy hero character "survivable" are implicit in D&D mechanics. The description of armor class and hit points in D&D defines them as abstractions of what hero presents in more concrete mechanics / terms: defensive combat value, evasion (talent), armor or combat luck, etc. I prefer hero's method, but on a conceptual level they are assuming the same sorts of things - its just that D&D doesn't explain how a particular blow glanced off your armor, or was dodged, etc. Also, "high-level" fantasy hero characters can sometimes be built on the same number of points as beginning or moderately experienced supers. At that point, with the right talents, a character can mow down a dozen orcs with relative certainty - though the overall peril in any given combat tend to be greater in Hero.

[aprilfool]

Fantasy Hero is Genre Book and has several 5th edition settings books available (which include basic magic systems).  Like HERO in general it is designed as a toolkit to allow a GM to make a personalized game.  Depending on what version of D&D you are familiar with certain parts will seem familiar.  Characteristics in HERO at low low levels (>20) are equivalent to AD&D 1st Edition.  Many Talents will seem very familiar if you've played D&D v3.x (feats).  The biggest things to get used to is that mechanics matter in HERO.  The Special Effect is not nearly as important.  There is no direct translation of Hit Points in HERO. If you plan on being the GM, you will probably want to get a setting book and a spell book (if Magic will play an important role in your game world). 

 

I played DnD 20 plus years ago. I was not a huge gamer then. I only played a game or two. 

Thanks for the information.

May I ask what you mean by "the biggest things to get used to is that the mechanics matter in HERO". 

No plans on being the GM

[aprilfool]

Fantasy Hero and the Hero System itself (you'll need the PDFs of the 6th edition rules or you can use the rules from Champions Complete) allows you to play any sort of fantasy genre that you like. Sword and sorcery in a gritty world? No problem. Epic, continent-sweeping campaign? No problem. Magic-sparse intrigue à la Game of Thrones? No problem. Dimension-hopping, high powered fantasy? No problem.

 

Hero allows you to create and tweak how everything works, and Fantasy Hero provides several example genres of magic systems for you to start with. It also provides tons of information about different types of campaigns, elements of fantasy roleplaying, weapons, armor, and all sorts of related data.

Thanks for the information!

[aprilfool]

- D&D did the mistake of not letting Armor reduce damage. Wich meant a ton of Rules was needed to compensate for htis (like the saving throws and evasion like abilities). It also meant that combat was mostly "whittling down HP". HERO does not has this bug - armor reduces damage - wich makes stuff like saving throws unessesary.

- Hero does not like absolute effects like "Attack always hits", "Instant death" and the like. But then again Hero deson't needs those to be balanced.

- the closest equivalent for a D&D turn would propably be a Hero Phase.

- every +1/-1 in HERO is roughly equivalent to +2/-2 in D&D. Hero has a bit less granularity, especially in low powered areas.

- balancing Weapon Fighting, Defenses and magic can be a bit of a problem. But there are guidelines in the Core Rulebook that should help.

- balancing Armed Figthing and Magic can be a problem. There are several approaches to solve this - like the Equipment Pool form the APG and the various Magic Systems of Fantasy Hero. Or just playing low/no magic setting for the start.

 

Things you might need:

You need the Core Rules (6E1 and 6E2, might be avalible as a bundle). Alterantively Champions Complete can be used as Core book (but it is somewhat more focussed on the Superheroic genre). 80-95% the rules for every genre are in these books (a bit like a mix of D&D Player Handbook and GM Handbook). Genre books cover whatever the core rules could not.

Optional: Fantasy Hero (the Genre book). Also has subrules and tips for the genre. Highly Advisable.

Optional: Hero Designer. Programm to create Charactersheets. Might be less needed for Fantasy then for Superheroic games. Only avalible from Online Store, not 3rd party retailers.

Optional: Hero System Grimoire* - prewritten spells.

Optional: Hero System Marital Arts (HSMA)* - covers martial arts from no-magic Fantasy too superheroic and everything in between.

Opional: There used to be a Hero Book for Monsters* (thinkg of Monster manual), but I cannot find the name. Alternatively only the HD Pack would be enough.

Optional: There are also several 1-2$ Suplements from steve long for a specific thematic, like [Theme] Magic. Or about Skeletons/Demons.*

 

*The good thing about Hero is that you can build everythig yourself. The bad thing is that you have to build almost everything yourself, unless you have book/HD pack that had the work already done for you.

The first part of your post sounds like Greek to me... LOL. Probably because I haven't played in so long

Things for the list of things I need. I will check those out. 

Thank you for replying

[aprilfool]

In the general idea behind the system, D&D is geared to have the rules tell you what you can do, and everything else is up to the GM.  In Fantasy Hero and the HERO System in general, the GM instead tells you what you can't do.  This does mean the GM has to do a little more work up front to determine how they want, for instance, magic to work, but the advantage is that you can have magic work exactly the way you want it to.  

 

With Fantasy Hero, you can do pretty much everything you can do with D&D, and a whole lot more.  The reverse isn't true.  

 

As far as rules are concerned, I'd say that besides the whole different polyhedral dice thing, probably the biggest differences are in the way characters increase in power.  For instance, in D&D a 10th level character will have on average 10 times as many hit points as a 1st level character.  The equivalent in Fantasy Hero won't necessarily have many more "hit points" (BODY and STUN) but will be well rounded and experienced in many other ways.  

 

Oh, and once you've learned Fantasy Hero, you've also learned the all of the rules you need for playing superheroes, or galaxy spanning science fiction, or cyberpunk, or post-apocalyptic, or gritty modern day, or pulp adventures.  

I am beginning to like the sounds of HERO more and more.

Thanks for replying

[aprilfool]

In the general idea behind the system, D&D is geared to have the rules tell you what you can do, and everything else is up to the GM.  In Fantasy Hero and the HERO System in general, the GM instead tells you what you can't do.  This does mean the GM has to do a little more work up front to determine how they want, for instance, magic to work, but the advantage is that you can have magic work exactly the way you want it to.  

 

With Fantasy Hero, you can do pretty much everything you can do with D&D, and a whole lot more.  The reverse isn't true.  

 

As far as rules are concerned, I'd say that besides the whole different polyhedral dice thing, probably the biggest differences are in the way characters increase in power.  For instance, in D&D a 10th level character will have on average 10 times as many hit points as a 1st level character.  The equivalent in Fantasy Hero won't necessarily have many more "hit points" (BODY and STUN) but will be well rounded and experienced in many other ways.  

 

Oh, and once you've learned Fantasy Hero, you've also learned the all of the rules you need for playing superheroes, or galaxy spanning science fiction, or cyberpunk, or post-apocalyptic, or gritty modern day, or pulp adventures.  

what do you mean by "the whole different polyhedral dice thing"

[Hyper-Man]

D&D uses all manner of different sided dice. HERO only uses 6 sided dice.

[aprilfool]

D&D uses all manner of different sided dice. HERO only uses 6 sided dice.

Thanks for the explanation

[Aversill]

It depends greatly on which D and D you're playing.  Having just turned my 1st edition game into a Fantasy Hero Game.  1e D and D combat is a conga line.  Characters and monsters attempt to whittle down HP.  There's nothing you can do about that, and then the cleric heals the players who aren't dead. 

 

Later editions are a lot more like Hero because they come from a gaming environment that has partially been evolved by games like Hero.  When I switched to Hero, I looked at 4th edition D and D to get ideas for normal people kind of abilities and I found that a lot of them already existed in the ruleset under things like Dodge or Presence Attack.  In essence, 4e with its move, minor, standard, is the same as the 1/2 phase, 0 phase, 1/2 phase of Hero except that in Hero, the attack has to come last.  You might think of Hero as kind of like 4th edition, except that the players can invent their own Powers, and also except that, in all but mental attacks, it's the defender who chooses whether they will defend with Reflex (DCV), Fortitude (High Con, High Stun, Damage Reduction), or AC (PD, ED, etc.). 

 

In general, Hero does combat better than D and D, and in the case of 4e, takes about as long.  What it does poorly is balance.  As soon as the heroes aren't fighting villains of equal point value, the whole system is just a bit shaky.  How many 100 point monsters equal one 200 point character?  Hero can't tell you.  It also has problems with encounter balance for non-combat elements, which 4e does well (it's its one saving grace, in my opinion).  So, for instance, in 4e, if the characters are expected to convince the troll shaman to let his prisoners go while fending off spider attacks, that can be accounted for in terms of a Skill Challenge.  Hero should have that (all games should, it's a great mechanic), but it doesn't, and thus the narrative can get bogged down into a wargame if you let it (a problem with most games) with a couple of anti-climactic rolls.  Traps are an absolute pain.  You could run a trap as a robot, you could buy a dungeon as a base and buy the trap that way, you could buy the trap as a triggered offshoot of someone's powers, but no matter how you do it, it's hoaky.  That being said, most people who played 3.5 and 4e were ambivalent (or downright antagonisitic) about how traps were used anyways, so your mileage may vary.  I like them.  I have to make do in either system, but for different reasons.

 

Healing is a problem in Hero, in my opinion, but there are threads on here to help you fix it.  Hero has a "disease" mechanic through impairment and disabling injuries, and partially through long term drains, but then someone has to buy the drain and it gets hoaky as with traps.  In any case, because almost everything in Hero is built with the same tools (powers, limitations, and advantages), a mechanic like disease is both easy to produce and too easy to get rid of (see healing, regeneration, and power pools).  At the same time, how often did the disease mechanic come up in D and D, really?

[NuSoardGraphite]

 

 

It depends greatly on which D and D you're playing.  Having just turned my 1st edition game into a Fantasy Hero Game.  1e D and D combat is a conga line.  Characters and monsters attempt to whittle down HP.  There's nothing you can do about that, and then the cleric heals the players who aren't dead. 

 

Later editions are a lot more like Hero because they come from a gaming environment that has partially been evolved by games like Hero.  When I switched to Hero, I looked at 4th edition D and D to get ideas for normal people kind of abilities and I found that a lot of them already existed in the ruleset under things like Dodge or Presence Attack.  In essence, 4e with its move, minor, standard, is the same as the 1/2 phase, 0 phase, 1/2 phase of Hero except that in Hero, the attack has to come last.  You might think of Hero as kind of like 4th edition, except that the players can invent their own Powers, and also except that, in all but mental attacks, it's the defender who chooses whether they will defend with Reflex (DCV), Fortitude (High Con, High Stun, Damage Reduction), or AC (PD, ED, etc.).

 

Over the years, I have found a lot of games that have borrowed ideas from Hero.  

 

 

 

In general, Hero does combat better than D and D, and in the case of 4e, takes about as long.  What it does poorly is balance.  As soon as the heroes aren't fighting villains of equal point value, the whole system is just a bit shaky.  How many 100 point monsters equal one 200 point character?  Hero can't tell you.  It also has problems with encounter balance for non-combat elements, which 4e does well (it's its one saving grace, in my opinion).  So, for instance, in 4e, if the characters are expected to convince the troll shaman to let his prisoners go while fending off spider attacks, that can be accounted for in terms of a Skill Challenge.  Hero should have that (all games should, it's a great mechanic), but it doesn't, and thus the narrative can get bogged down into a wargame if you let it (a problem with most games) with a couple of anti-climactic rolls.  Traps are an absolute pain.  You could run a trap as a robot, you could buy a dungeon as a base and buy the trap that way, you could buy the trap as a triggered offshoot of someone's powers, but no matter how you do it, it's hoaky.  That being said, most people who played 3.5 and 4e were ambivalent (or downright antagonisitic) about how traps were used anyways, so your mileage may vary.  I like them.  I have to make do in either system, but for different reasons.

 

You actually stat out traps?  I just write up their effects with a vague idea of their Active Point value (in case someone has a power that works against  the trap) and have characters use Security Systems (with a penalty based on whatever difficulty I assigned to the trap) to disarm it.  Works great for me.  Basically, I do what they do in D&D.

 

And combat in Hero can take a long time if you use every available rule.  But it can also be quick if all your players know their stuff and everything goes smoothly.   Especially in a heroic level game like Fantasy Hero.  Enemies tend to die a lot faster in FH than in Champions (much lower defenses) and optional rules like Hit Locations and Impairing/Disabling make it pretty easy to take enemies down with only 1 or 2 solid hits. (as it should be)

 

 

Healing is a problem in Hero, in my opinion, but there are threads on here to help you fix it.  Hero has a "disease" mechanic through impairment and disabling injuries, and partially through long term drains, but then someone has to buy the drain and it gets hoaky as with traps.  In any case, because almost everything in Hero is built with the same tools (powers, limitations, and advantages), a mechanic like disease is both easy to produce and too easy to get rid of (see healing, regeneration, and power pools).  At the same time, how often did the disease mechanic come up in D and D, really?

 

How Healing works in the campaign is up to the GM.  It is only "problematic" in the fact that under the standard rules, it is readily available to the point that any combat that doesn't prove deadly can easily be recovered from.  For those who don't like this dynamic, that's a problem.  For those who do want that dynamic, it's a blessing.  Easy healing is actually an aspect of D&D and one of the ways in which FH can resemble D&D quite well.

 

Impairing/Disabling is more akin to "critical wounds" than to disease.  As you mentioned, diseases are usually represented by various drains.  However I don't understand why you think they are "hoaky" because they have to be written up as such.  I treat them much the same as I treat traps.  I just come up with an effect.....usually a slow, cumulative drain vs body and or stun with appropriate penalties based on what the disease does to the victim and come up with a rough Active Point cost so a character with a Cure Disease spell (Dispel vs any power with a disease SFX) can attempt to cure it.  I don't sweat the small stuff.

[Aversill]

I don't know what D and D you're talking about, but they've statted out traps since 3e.  They have an experience value associated with them, they have all kinds of information associated with them.  And Hero is more stat dependent than D and D, so yeah, I stat them out.  I buy them as robots.  It works.  I have a basic shell of stats that gets a power (the trap).  This is especially helpful if the trap is part of an encounter and I'm trying to balance things.

 

Hero combat takes between 45 minutes and 2 hours.  If you get faster than that, kudos.  That's what the rest of us do.  That's the same as 4e, but 4e isn't as detailed.  4e never gets less than 30 minutes in a balanced encounter.  1e and 2e are a lot different and go remarkably faster than Hero. 

 

As for healing, if a mechanic gets discussed by everyone in terms of the house rules they use to fix it, then it's broken.  Obviously that's my opinion, but then...that's all these are.  See previous forum posts about healing.  No one that I've seen does it by the book. That being said, the Hero power Healing has about the same effect as 4e healing.  Most people hate 4e healing.  Along with the lack of magic, it's often cited as one of the more ridiculous points of the edition (4e is often called Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies).  Of course, in most versions of D and D resurrection is more expensive (in terms of game resources) than it is in Hero. 

 

As for the disease mechanic: in 4e, it's the only means of tracking an effect that lasts longer than a long rest (a night's sleep).  It isn't about diseases.  It's a special effect.  Impairment and disabling are the Hero version of long term damage.  That being said, Body doesn't particularly heal fast in Hero so it doesn't really need a long term effect mechanic.  Drains with a delayed return rate factors in there as well, as does Damage Over Time (though I haven't much use of it, so I couldn't say for sure).

[NuSoardGraphite]

Our disconnect comes from the fact that i played basic, 1st ed and 2cnd ed AD&D. I played a few games of 3ed or 3.5 and i've never even touched a 4th ed book. in the previous editions of dnd, the traps were simply given a damage or effect and what saving throw was necessary to escape it and in some editions a difficulty for a theif to disarm it.

 

When i ran my last fantasy hero campaign i did much the same.

 

Pit trap:

The characters may make a perception roll at -3 to notice the click sound before the trap door opens beneath them. if they succeed, they get a dive for cover roll to get out of the way (2-hex distance). if they didnt notice the click, they get a dive for cover roll at -3. anyone who fails the dive for cover will fall into a 5" deep pit of spikes. landing on the spikes does 1d6k damage 1/2d6 times to random locations. this trap is -2 to detect, but easy (+2) to disarm.

 

Thats pretty much how i "write up" my traps.

[NuSoardGraphite]

A sample disease (5th edition format)

 

The plague:

1d6 drain (10) +14 to maximum effect (+7) vs STR, DEX, CON, BOD, COM, STUN and END, same time (+2) continuous (+1) 0 END (+1/2) sticky (+1/2) recovers 5pts per week (+1 3/4) 115 active

Extra time: 1 day (-4), effect can be avoided by a successful CON roll (-1) only vs living beings (- 1/2) total, 19pts

 

This is a terrible disease that causes terrible bloody lesions on the victims skin and causes a wasting sickness to fall upon the afflicted. When a potential victim comes into contact with the disease, the character can make a CON roll (with a penalty or bonus determined by the GM based on the amount of exposure) if this roll is successful, the character avoids contracting the disease. if it fails, the disease takes hold and they will begin to show symptoms inside of 24 hours of exposure. the character will begin to feel weak and lethargic. after that point they will continue to weaken until the lesions become visible on the 3rd or 4th day of the infection. strong healthy people can survive this disease, but the sick and elderly are at extreme risk when they contact this disease.

 

Notes: the drain takes effect 1 day after coming into contact with it. at that point, the drain is rolled and subtracted from all the relevant characteristics. at maximum effect, this will drain 20 points from all characteristics mentioned. any characters of 10 body or less are at risk of death with this disease. the victim can make a CON roll once per day to shake off its effects, but each day the victims CON will be at a lower number which could lower the relevant roll. once the drain reaches its maximum effect, the character will begin to recover (5pts per week as noted) without any more points being drained from their characteristics.

 

Thats generally how i handle diseases. pretty simple write up, but detailed enough to implement a dispel on it if it come up in play.

[Aversill]

That works.  In 4e, traps were often part of larger encounters.  So, the characters face it along with other monsters (you're fighting four gnolls in a room full of pits).  At that point, if you want to balance it, you need to know how many 'points' the trap is worth...unless it affects everyone (gnolls), in which case, it doesn't really matter.