I have trouble truly grokking HERO

[Claire Redfield]

I want to use HERO/Champions Complete more, but I find that I run into some problems that don't crop up with other systems. M&M and MHR are my two other go-to supers systems. With either one, it's easy to have an idea of just how fast someone can move, or ballpark what a good number for effect ranks might be. For HERO, I have a lot of trouble with that. How much PD and ED should Captain America have? How much END? What are good benchmarks? There are some benchmarks in the book, but it's difficult to get a good sense of familiarity with the scales.

What are good ways to quickly figure out just how fast someone is moving? All the meters and so on are great, but I have a lot of trouble putting that into practical terms. Whereas in M&M, Sonic the Hedgehog (who can run roughly Mach 5, about 3800-4000 MPH) is Speed rank 10 or so, which is nice and easy to use and lets me also quickly look up how far he can move in a single turn. I don't know how to do that with HERO, and that's holding me back. So is not really having a good idea of benchmarks for things besides the basic stats.

 

Does that make sense? I know I've asked about calculating speed in more familiar terms before, but overall I'm just finding that it's kind of tough to really make this stuff feel like second nature.

 

Since I've been playing Champions Online lately, I'd kinda like to get more familiar with HERO.

[Hyper-Man]

Mach Speed movement is really just a speed of plot ability.  How much combat velocity a speedster can achieve goes a long way toward determining how much damage they can do (via velocity based combat maneuvers like Move By).  Whether or not a speedster can or should do more damage than a brick in a campaign needs to be looked at.  If the top brick can do 15d6 in normal combat circumstances I would limit the top speedster to a couple less or 13d6 under normal circumstances.  That's essentially what I did with my starting versions of Superman and Flash.  Batman is a good starting template for Captain America as well. Just swap the Utility Belt with the Shield (which will typically be more expensive) and remove skills to balance.

 

How much END is a question of how long do you want a character to be able to fight (use 2 to 3 different abilities* per Phase before they hit 0 END without Pushing).  This is a function of Their END, REC and SPD as well as how aggressively they use their various abilities that cost END in combat.  I try to allow for END usage per TURN close to a character's REC.  It can be a few points higher but not too much. Reduced END on major abilities is usually part of the mix as well.

 

*Attack, Movement and possibly an Active Defense Power.

 

Hope that helps some.  I'm sure others will chime in eventually with better explanations. Examples is the best thing I know how to do.

 

HM

[Beast]

see the download area and look at the characters there (helps to have Hero Designer)

Capt is there

 

the base game figures on 12 damage classes(100 ton lift)

Def around 25 def w/ 12 def of it being resistant

CV around 9

 

want mach speed buy 1 level of mega scale on 10 m of movement

 

to figure out mph

((max noncombat meters /2) x speed)/3=MPH

((max noncombat meters /2) x speed)/2=KPH

[Chris Goodwin]

For movement, meters per turn times .2 gets close to miles per hour, or times .3 gets close to kilometers per hour. For the rest, 6E1 p. 35 gives some numbers to start with, which I think is approximately how most HERO System products benchmark NPCs.

[Hyper-Man]

For movement, meters per turn times .2 gets close to miles per hour, or times .3 gets close to kilometers per hour. For the rest, 6E1 p. 35 gives some numbers to start with, which I think is approximately how most HERO System products benchmark NPCs.

 

I think she only has Champions Complete so any references we give need to be for that smaller book.

 

Champions Complete has a chart that gives Total Character Point guidelines on page 9 but it has far less detail compared to the chart in 6e1 that you mentioned.

[Christopher]

The sugested Campaign Cap for attacks is 12 DC*. Not counting maneuvers like Haymaker. But propably including the Move-By/Through maneuvers for Speedsters.

OCV/DCV: You should figure out a spread for your campaign. Don't make it too big. If OCV = DCV the chance to hit is about 60%. Every +1/-1 is about +10%/-10% on that chance.

SPD: This is more of a speedsters stat than movement speed, imho. It determines how often you can act. Again, get a small spread (usually 3 adjacent SPD's). 5-7 is used with most example Characters. Speedsters are 7. Martial Artists tend to 6. Rest is 5. If you have a high SPD you can go down on CON a bit, as you can afford it to be stunned.

Defenses: In supers your PD/ED should be bigh enough to not take Body from the max daamge Normal Damage attack. Usually 1-1.5 times the DC cap. The upper bound in turn is 2.5-3.5 times the DC cap.

 

*This is perhaps the most interesting figure to change. As DC also affects how much is spend on defenses, you can make more well rounded characters with a lower cap. But most pre-written 400 point chars seem to be designed for the 12 DC/400 point game. So maybe instead increase the points with same cap, so you can use those guys.

 

Basic Types:

Bricks have top level defenses, CON and STUN, REC, STR. But thier CV is rather low and SPD should be the lowest (5). They can afford to spend a lot of END and don't abort much.

Martial Artists (like Captain America, Spiderman, Batman) have top level CV and improved SPD (the 6), but not so much defenses (lower limit).

Speedsters have top SPD(7), improved CV but medium defenses at best.

The rest kinda has to fit thesmelf into that. usually SPD 5.

 

How much END:

I think Tasha came up with this formula.

Asume a combat that started normally at post segment 12. Asume you use a half-move (combat speeds) + the usual attack every phase+whatever costs end per Turn. If between REC and END you can make it for 2 turns, you are propably good.

Actuall combat END expenditure will be lower, as you sometimes have to abort to a defensive action (wich only costs 1 END, tops).

[bluesguy]

Tasha has created a nice blog on this topic and then there is the amazing My Character building technique thread, also started by Tasha.

[Sean Waters]

Move rates: APPROXIMATELY Speed x Move x Non-combat multiple (1 for combat movement) /5 = move in miles per hour.

 

So a character with SPD 3 Move 20m and a x2 NCM = 3 x 20 x 2 = 120.  Divided by 5 gives 24 mph

 

It should actually be 22.5mph, but that is close enough.

 

As for how much PD and ED Captain America should have, well, that depends on your campaign and how you want to build the character.  Don't worry about getting it 'right' because every comic book writer and movie scriptwriter has no idea what the PD and ED are, they just want the character to be cool.

 

So, Say comparing Cap to Iron Man, IM definitely has higher PD and ED, if Cap does not get his shield in the way, at least to my way of thinking, but not by much: generally you should only go above or below average defences by a few points  If average defences are 24, Cap is probably about 20 without the shield, IM may be 26.

 

Mind you, Black Widow is going to be lower than both of them as she is highly trained rather than superpowered.  That is more of a logistical problem: should she be a better fighter than Cap?  Probably not...should she be tougher?  Definitely not...you will have to make some sacrifices to even cinematic reality in making your game choices, but so long as the characters work and are enjoyable to play, you are golden.  OTOH BW definitely has a lot more espionage skills than Cap: if that is something that features in the game, the character will have a niche, if not, and the game is combat oriented, her combat ability will have to be ramped up to allow her to compete.

 

Generally my 'starting point' for defences will be Campaign 'average' attack (CAA) in DCs x 2 for non resistant defences and CAA in DCs x 1 for resistant defences.

 

This means that a CAA will do 1.5 x DC* in damage through defences on average.

 

The only real way to balance characters properly is to either have been playing for a long time or play them and see, but, generally, I'm pretty flexible about builds: ultimately you can not build a character on a limited point budget that is invulnerable or all-powerful.  The only caveat i would have is limit the range of Speed: otherwise some characters get to take a lot more actions than others and that can get boring for the players of the slower characters.  Generally I stick to average SPD plus or minus one.

 

Also, while you are getting used to the system, do not be afraid to re-design characters, or have players re-design characters to better fit concept.

 

 

 

 

*Why?  Because each DC is a die of damage and a die averages 3.5 on rolls over time, so if defences = DC x 2 then each die is getting (on average) 3.5 - 2 = 1.5 through defences.  You can adjust this to get more or less damage per attack through defences to make combats longer or shorter.  Generally you will want around 3 solid hits to put a PC down, so that also gives you an idea of STUN: in a game with an average DC for attacks of 12, you will expect 12 x 1.5 = 18 damage per attack through defences, so Stun should be at least 37 (18 x 2 + 1) to ensure 3 average hits are required to put the PC down.  Stun (generally) should not exceed 53 (18 x 3 -1).  In a game with big variations in the average damage range, consider lower defences** and higher Stun (and Con) or the use of Damage Reduction.

 

 

** sounds odd, but you want the lower damage characters to still have an effect but want to prevent the higher damage characters simply one-shotting everything.

[Tasha]

Tasha has created a nice blog on this topic and then there is the amazing My Character building technique thread, also started by Tasha.

/blush thanks! The blog and the Thread have the same article, but the thread has discussion about how I got the numbers and suggestions from others that helped make the article better.

 

I try to work from Campaign Averages. With the understanding that come characters will be above or below those averages.

so Damage Class 12 (aka 12d6 attacks), Dex 23 (A hold over from earlier editions, but villains are still written with this average in mind), CV 9 (OCV and DCV Averaged together), 24 Defense (PD&ED Averaged together) whether you limit resistant to Half def or don't limit depends on the feel you want for your campaign. With those numbers you have the tools to generate the other numbers.

 

When making supers don't get too hung up on what the System thinks a "normal" person's stats should max out at. Comic Writers don't worry about that realism thing and you shouldn't either. Just choose abilities and powers that fit the character concept and who are powerful enough to compete within the powerlevel you set as the GM.

[Christopher]

 

24 Defense (PD&ED Averaged together) whether you limit resistant to Half def or don't limit depends on the feel you want for your campaign. With those numbers you have the tools to generate the other numbers.

 

How much percentage Resistant Defenses is allowed is a question of how viable KA's should be to use against Characters. Superheroic games go as high as 75% of total defenses being resistant. Wich (with the generally higher ratio of defense/DC) results in KA's being next to useless against Characters.

Heroic games and low powered superheroic (or gritty Supoerehroic like dark Champions) tends towards 50% Resistant, making KA a lot more viable.

[Chris Goodwin]

I think she only has Champions Complete so any references we give need to be for that smaller book.

 

Champions Complete has a chart that gives Total Character Point guidelines on page 9 but it has far less detail compared to the chart in 6e1 that you mentioned.

 

True.  Claire, I don't know which core books you have -- do you mind sounding off?  

 

Both 6E1 and CC do include the Normal Characteristics Maxima levels.  It could be assumed that a real world character would max out near or at the NCM; a highly trained, skilled, and experienced real world combatant (such as a Navy SEAL) might have DEX 18 and SPD 4.  An action movie character might have a stat slightly above NCM (most of Arnold's characters would probably be STR 23-25; John McClain would have EGO 20-23 easily; Jackie Chan's martial artists could easily be DEX 23-25 and SPD 5-6).  Superheroes could easily hit 15-20 in "primary" Characteristics outside of their specialty and 25+ in them (a brick might have STR 60, DEX 18, and SPD 4, while a martial artist might be STR 18, DEX 27, and SPD 7).  

 

If you don't have them in at least PDF, I'd recommend picking up 6E1 and the 6e Champions genre book, which includes the Superhero Gallery (a large number of superheroic templates intended for use in providing inspiration, guidelines, and assistance when creating characters).  

[Sean Waters]

I would be less concerned with getting it right in any absolute sense than getting the look and feel right for your game.

 

For example, take a look at a superhero team comic, like Avengers or JLA: when they are fighting teams you very often get one or two panel 'complete combats' between opposing team members, with maybe one page or two pages for a major starts battle.

 

If you are playing a heroic level game with cops and robbers, well, the hero never gets hit or, if the hero is hit then it is never a completely debilitating hit.  OTOH the hero one shots mooks all the time and maybe has a drag out battle with one or two of the opposition.

 

This is where you want to start your modelling: to an extent it does not matter if your characters all have CVs of 10 or all have CVs of 4, so long as that is about right for the game.  I suspect that most 'action heroes' have pretty high CVs: they rarely get hit and never have much trouble hitting - except for the major villain fight at the end.

 

I am not a fan of roster books or (generally) builds for specific named characters from movies or comics, simply because, being a RPG with rules, we are constrained to things that script writers are not: you have no idea whether, when Kurt Russell's character catches the knife and throws it back in the iconic scene from Big Trouble in Little China (it's all in the reflexes) whether that was a complete fluke i.e. a roll of 3, or whether he could repeat that 9 out of 10.

 

Moreover, scriptwriters often have a character do something just the once, or for dramatic purposes, and ;players and GMs don't usually work that way.  I actually quite like the idea in DnD4 of 'At-will', 'Encounter' and 'Daily' powers - it is an artificial system but it does mean that PCs can not constantly trot out their best attack.  Of course you can build that idea into a Hero character if you like - and that is the point I am stabbing at, or possibly with: decide how you want your game to play, design the characters accordingly.

[Tasha]

How much percentage Resistant Defenses is allowed is a question of how viable KA's should be to use against Characters. Superheroic games go as high as 75% of total defenses being resistant. Wich (with the generally higher ratio of defense/DC) results in KA's being next to useless against Characters.

Heroic games and low powered superheroic (or gritty Supoerehroic like dark Champions) tends towards 50% Resistant, making KA a lot more viable.

 

Yeah, in some campaigns the GM WANTS KA's to be fairly useless. Discourages the madslashers and Wolverine clones. Claire was talking about Superheroic games so I stand by my numbers.

 

In my experience Heroic Games and Low Powered Super Heroic games tend to be limited by what equipment is reasonable to carry into a particular situation. (ie you don't wear the best combat Body Armor when you are infiltrating the Biker Gang or to wear to a Fancy dinner).

[Claire Redfield]

Hm. Interesting. And thanks, folks. I'm still pretty lost, but I will keep trying.

 

Right now, all I have is Champions Complete. My copy of 6E1 is somewhere in storage, and I was never able to get a copy of 6E2.

 

Anyone feel like walking through character creation with me in this thread? We could create one of a couple concepts, get a feel for what it's like in action, along with some guidance from more experienced HERO players.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Does anyone still have a link to that "Hero System In Two Pages" pdf?

 

I seem to have lost track of it when we moved to the new forum.

 

However, I think Claire would find it helpful.

[Chris Goodwin]

Hm. Interesting. And thanks, folks. I'm still pretty lost, but I will keep trying.

 

Right now, all I have is Champions Complete. My copy of 6E1 is somewhere in storage, and I was never able to get a copy of 6E2.

 

Anyone feel like walking through character creation with me in this thread? We could create one of a couple concepts, get a feel for what it's like in action, along with some guidance from more experienced HERO players.

 

Sure!  Do you have any ideas for things like power level?  If not, I'm happy to throw out some basics.  

[Claire Redfield]

I have two I'd like to see. One is Mantis, my original hero, who is sort of like Spider-Man in terms of powers, only with those of a praying mantis rather than a spider. She's very, very fast. Quicker than Spidey, even, but similar in other ways: wall-crawling, low-level flight/enhanced leaping, superhuman strength, heightened senses.

 

The other is high-powered. So I can wait on that if the other is easier to do.

[Chris Goodwin]

Ok, let's start with Mantis. We'll do standard superhero, which in 6e is 400 total points with 75 points of that in Matching Complications. Let's say up to 60 Active Points per Power, or 12 DC attacks, with 24 max defenses of a type. Not having a writeup of Spider-Man handy, I'm going to assume he's at 28 DEX and 8 SPD, which is really high for a standard superhero, but we'll throw that out as a ballpark figure.

 

Questions so far?

[Hyper-Man]

Does anyone still have a link to that "Hero System In Two Pages" pdf?

 

I seem to have lost track of it when we moved to the new forum.

 

However, I think Claire would find it helpful.

 

Sure, here are 3 different ones:

1. https://www.herogames.com/get/Hero2Page.pdf
2. http://www.herocentral.net/herocentral/get/files/premium/Hero2Page.pdf
3. http://www.herocentral.net/herocentral/get/files/premium/MHI_2page.pdf

[Claire Redfield]

Thank you for the links!

 

And so far, no questions. Sounds about right. Of course, I'm not exactly the best judge of something....

[Chris Goodwin]

Oh, I wanted to mention relationships between (formerly) Primary and Figured Characteristics. In 5th edition the Primary Characteristics were STR, DEX, CON, BODY, INT, EGO, PRE, and COMeliness, and the rest were Figured. The Figured characteristics were almost always bought up from their base values, and for the most part habit and translations from 5e cause builds of those to cluster around certain values. I'll address those:

 

OCV/DCV: Weren't Characteristics per se; they were tied exactly to DEX/3. 6e values will cluster around that value +/-1. Likewise for OMCV/DMCV and EGO/3, though for anyone but a mentalist there's almost no reason not to sell OMCV back to 0.

 

SPD: The 5e formula was 1 + (DEX/10); most characters tend to have SPD around DEX/5.

 

PD/ED: The formulas were STR/5 and CON/5, respectively. Values tend to be around the characteristic divided by 2 or 3.

 

REC: Was STR/5 + CON/5. Most characters wouldn't buy this up; CON and to a lesser extent STR were good enough buys that the base value was usually enough. If you anticipate burning through a lot of END or have defenses on the lower side (thus taking more STUN damage in combat) it might be worth increasing by a few points.

 

END: Was CON times 2; would range from there to CON times 2.5 or 3, depending on expected END usage.

 

STUN: Was BODY + STR/2 + CON/2. Most characters would range from there to approximately 50-60.

 

Of the Primary Characteristics, CON would usually be in the 20-30 range, mainly to take advantage of the Figured values you got; that's actually not a bad value to have, depending on how much STUN damage you expect to take. STR around 15-20 unless you're a brick; 50-60 is not uncommon for bricks. DEX around 18 for bricks and mentalists, 20-24 for blasters, more for martial artists and DEX specialists. BODY was probably the least bought up; maybe 20ish for bricks, and 10-20 for anyone else. INT is probably 10-13 unless you're a specialist. EGO is 18-23 for mentalists, probably 10-15 for everyone else. PRE would probably be 20-30 for bricks, Captain America/Batman types and PRE specialists, probably 15-25 for everyone else. COM would probably have a few odd points thrown in; the equvalent now would probably be 1-3 levels of Striking Appearance.

 

I hope all of this helps!

[Claire Redfield]

It does, and thank you very much.

[Tasha]

Hm. Interesting. And thanks, folks. I'm still pretty lost, but I will keep trying.

 

Right now, all I have is Champions Complete. My copy of 6E1 is somewhere in storage, and I was never able to get a copy of 6E2.

 

Anyone feel like walking through character creation with me in this thread? We could create one of a couple concepts, get a feel for what it's like in action, along with some guidance from more experienced HERO players.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/76564-my-character-building-technique-how-to-build-hero-system-characters/

 

My article on building Characters and how the numbers work together and what you need to know to figure out what Characteristics you need to buy to be competitive in any Hero System Game.

[Chris Goodwin]

You can also look at @Cassandra's Templates thread on the Champions forum.  Her templates are good superhero level benchmarks.  

[Tasha]

She plays at a slightly lower powerlevel than the Villains books, but she does make really simple Builds. Also keep in mind that Cassandra only works with 5e, so some power names will be different and the point totals for pretty much everything will be different when converted to 6e