Use of the Hero System's Older Editions

[Weldun]

Personally, I've stuck with 5E because a lot of changes in 6E changed things that I liked. As always, it falls to personal taste and obedience of the first rule of gaming. Are you having fun? With a substantial 5E library (We have every Ultimate except for Mystic) and THE MOST USEFUL SUPPLEMENT EVER PRINTED FOR HERO, the UNTIL Superpowers Database, it's proven easier for me to GM 5E, especially for new groups as I have a lot of reference material to source from and my players were able to build characters more readily. The only things that I've taken from 6E have been the new STUN multiplier for Killing Attacks (Goodbye STUN-lotto) and a modified version of Unified Power.

[Dr. Arcane]

  I mostly use 5e, with some 4e; because my 6e stuff is strictly PDFs that I haven't printed out.

However, at the moment I'm neither running nor playing in anything HERO (or anything else for that matter). 

 

Hoping to change that if I can find some players. Unfortunately everyone in my area seems to put HERO in the

"Too Complicated" category (these same people play Pathfinder though)

 

My question is: Do most people use the "Official" Champions Universe, come up with there own Universe, or do some sort of Blending?

[Tholomyes]

My question is: Do most people use the "Official" Champions Universe, come up with there own Universe, or do some sort of Blending?

 

I tend to do my own universe; part of the fun of GMing for me is that type of world building. Also, truth be told, the champions universe never really grabbed me. There are a couple interesting bits that I've mined for the bases of other ideas, but the issue I seem to have is that the characters tend to either be comic book expies of existing (mostly Marvel) characters, or are just there, filling an archetype: Kinematik is just Magneto, while Kinetik is just a speedster (with flash-esque bits in the origin), and Defender is just the Capital-"H" Hero. While this is kind of true for most superhero RPG settings, something about the champions setting makes it click even less for me. I don't know what it is, but other fictional comic book settings manage to grab me a lot more, even when doing the same thing. For example, I really like the card game, Sentinels of the Multiverse's setting, and have even considered running a game in that universe for friends who are a fan of the card game, but most of their characters are direct homages to comic book characters (often times a blend of at least one marvel and at least one DC character). Likewise, the Freedom City setting for M&M is much the same way, in that you can tell who is the Superman analogue, who's the Batman analogue, who's the Thor analogue, and so on, but there's enough that's changed that it feels more interesting: the Superman analogue never came back to life following the "Death of Superman" analogue. Batman's analogue has a really cool Edgar Allen Poe themed Rogue's Gallery, etc.

 

I want to like the setting, because I like the system so much, and it'd be useful if I could get more out of the champions setting books I bought, but right now, all I can do is mostly borrow stat-blocks for villains if I'm feeling lazy.

[Christopher R Taylor]

If you don't move to 6th I strongly advise borrowing a few of the changes:

• Area effect cost, extremely well done and flexible
• Damage Over Time advantage, somewhat complicated but solves massive problems from previous builds
• Restructuring of Transform costs
• Change Environment concepts and additions (such as choking)
• Some of the new sense modifiers like Adjacent and penetrative instead of N-Ray
• AVAD and ACV advantages, much better than previous attempts

And yeah I use a modified Champions Universe, with my own timeline and stuff added in and some left out (like Detroit being obliterated).

[Weldun]

I don't know if the CU got re-written for 6E or not like it did in the 4E-to-5E shift. I use the CU largely as written, but I've added a few things (like a large city just WEST of Monterrey, Callifornia) and a population of Mutant Animals that were created there. A few extra tweaks too, but largely the CU.

 

EDIT: So, posting when tired results in East/West confusion.

Edited April 17, 2016 by Weldun

[Vondy]

I cherry pic elements of the CU I like and twist them for my homebrew game.

[Hugh Neilson]

I think the problem some people have is that then they're not sure how to handle odd distances, like say someone with a 7m half-move. Do you round down to 3 hexes? Round up to 4? My answer is to move them 3 1/2 hexes and leave the mini on the line between hexes, but some people (particularly folks with more of a minis background) seem to have an intense dislike of coloring outside the lines like that. One friend I've been gaming with for the better part of a decades still always has to ask "Which hex is this guy in?" and gets Does Not Compute Face when I tell him the figure belongs where it is.

 

 

That's not any different from having 2m hexes.  My half move of 15" is 7", do I round down to 6?  Do I put him halfway across the line?

 

 

 Your half move is 8" - round in the character's favour. That puts him in a specific hex.

 

So, moving back to the original post, if you always round in the character's favour (which is the rule), he moves 4 hexes as a half move.  If it's such a huge issue, get everyone's move rate before the game (we all review the character sheets anyway, right?) and compute their full and half moves on tonight's map, handing them out when the encounter begins.  "Tony, with these 2 meter hexes, your full move of 17 meters becomes 8.5, rounds to 9, hexes, and your half move is 17 meters/4 = 4.25 rounds to 4 hexes.

 

Or use a tape measure instead - now, Tony's move on a mat where 1" = 2 meters is 8.5" or 4.25" on the map itself.

[bigdamnhero]

THE MOST USEFUL SUPPLEMENT EVER PRINTED FOR HERO, the UNTIL Superpowers Database...

I would put the Equipment Guide as most useful for me personally, with 2nd place going to either Champions Powers* or the Grimoire depending on what genre I'm playing at the moment.

 

* ie - the 6ed version of USD.

 

My question is: Do most people use the "Official" Champions Universe, come up with there own Universe, or do some sort of Blending?

Mostly my own, but borrowing a lot from CU mainly in the form of NPCs. One thing I do not use are the fictional cities, because I prefer to use real cities & geography (tho I do use elements out of both Hudson City and Vibora Bay).

[Christopher R Taylor]

The advantage of the tape measure approach is nobody is counting hexes any more.  I would love to have a big flatscreen under the figures and project the terrain and stuff like AE templates.  How big was that explosion?  oops...

[Weldun]

I would put the Equipment Guide as most useful for me personally, with 2nd place going to either Champions Powers* or the Grimoire depending on what genre I'm playing at the moment.

 

* ie - the 6ed version of USD..

I placed USD as the most useful, because it illustrates to new players the concept of special effects vs. mechanical/game effects. But the equipment guide runs a close second as it shows how to use that concept to simulate known, real world effects.

[bigdamnhero]

I placed USD as the most useful, because it illustrates to new players the concept of special effects vs. mechanical/game effects. But the equipment guide runs a close second as it shows how to use that concept to simulate known, real world effects.

Ah, I was thinking in terms of most useful to me as a GM, not most instructional. Fair point.

[megaplayboy]

I use a mix of 5th and 6th, using the basic 6th rules with supplemental materials from the various Ultimate books. 5th probably had the most in-depth supplements for Champions, though I'm pretty sure 3rd and 4th edition had more adventure modules. I'd love to grab another copy of Horror Hero so I could incorporate some of their ideas about stress and PRE attacks.

[d_ns]

I have played all six editions, and right now I pretty much exclusively play, and my thinking has been tuned to, 6th edition - though usually by way of Champions Complete or Fantasy Hero Complete. That said, I have begun acquiring older editions myself for nostalgia value, wondering if there was a prior edition that would suit me better, but I haven't really felt compelled to change from 6th edition.

 

I liked the change from figured characteristics, for example, and that was enough to push me in the direction of 6th edition.

 

As for settings, when I have run and played in Superhero games, we have never once played in the Champions Universe. It's always been one homebrew or another.

[Lord Liaden]

I use the 5E Champions Universe as the basic framework for my supers games, because I grew up with and love mainstream comics (DC and Marvel), and the CU is firmly in their style, with no few analogues to characters and groups from those comics. But I also import a lot written for all other editions of the game, by Hero Games and other licensed parties, that's compatible with the setting. At this point I have so much published material, if I wanted to I could run games for the next decade without ever creating another original character.

[bigdamnhero]

Got a face-to-face lecture earlier this evening from a friend-of-a-friend about how 4ed Champions was the One True Edition and everything since is evilnastybad. At first I thought he wanted to have a conversation, but it quickly became apparent he wasn't interested in hearing anything about why I like 6ed, he just needed me to know how wrong I was. So I found someplace else to be. [shakes head]

[zslane]

Well, I'm somewhat sympathetic to his conclusion, but I reject his decision vector.

[Hyper-Man]

I laugh sometimes when I think about the various editions of the HERO/Champions rules and how they were numbered.

 

When you really think about it there aren't really 6 different editions of the rules.

It's actually only 4 (discounting Fuzion).

 

1e The beginning
2e is really 1er1 (cleaned up multipower)
3e is really 1er2 (combined content from Champions II and Champions III with 1er1)
4e is really 2e
*The Champions 4e Softcover and Champions 4e Deluxe are really like 2er1 and 2er2
5e is really 3e
5er is really 3er (it almost qualifies for its own edition status as 4e since it had more changes from 3e than 1er2 did from 1e)
6e is really 4e

CC and FHC are really 4e the Clift Notes editions

 

HM

[Lord Liaden]

And Fantasy Hero 4E was actually FH 2E, since it was the second edition of FH, just using the fourth edition of Hero System. Which you argue was not the fourth edition.

 

Too many editions. I feel old.

[rravenwood]

 

 

3e is really 1er2 (combined content from Champions II and Champions III with 1er1)

 

 

 

Champions 3rd edition actually only incorporated a couple minor things from Champions III (how to resolve Flash attacks, and a clarification on how to apply the damage multiplier for Vulnerabilities being the ones that I made note of - there could be one or two others that I didn't catch).  Both Champions II and Champions III continued to be compatible with Champions 3e, and continued to be available for purchase along with that edition of the base game - neither supplement was made obsolete or redundant at that time.

 

3e changed Growth and Shrinking fairly substantially, and while there were a number of other relatively minor changes and clarifications, I'd say that aside from the size-changing Powers, the main difference between 2e and 3e was one of presentation.  3e followed the lead of Justice Inc. as far as how the rules were structured, providing a lot more in the way of explanation and guidance for new players at the start of the book (including presenting a sample character and directing the reader to go through the provided solo adventure to get an initial feel for the game).

[bigdamnhero]

Well, I'm somewhat sympathetic to his conclusion, but I reject his decision vector.

Yeah, it wasn't his preference that bothered me - it's a &%$#@% game, play what you &%$#@% like! - it was the refusal to extend me the same courtesy.

[Christopher R Taylor]

3rd edition also added more than a few new powers and such (power pools, disadvantages, and so on).  It was pretty extensively a change compared to 2nd edition.

[Lord Liaden]

Yeah, it wasn't his preference that bothered me - it's a &%$#@% game, play what you &%$#@% like! - it was the refusal to extend me the same courtesy.

 

I've noticed a lot of arguments are between people who seem to need to be right, and to be publicly acknowledged as right. Even if it's by people on the Internet they never met and probably never will.

 

For many people, their personal sense of self-worth appears tied to their opinions. They take any challenge to their views as if it was a personal attack.

[assault]

3rd edition also added more than a few new powers and such (power pools, disadvantages, and so on).  It was pretty extensively a change compared to 2nd edition.

 No it didn't. That stuff was in Champions II and III, which were sold alongside both 2e and 3e, and were optional anyway.

[Vondy]

I laugh sometimes when I think about the various editions of the HERO/Champions rules and how they were numbered.

 

When you really think about it there aren't really 6 different editions of the rules.

It's actually only 4 (discounting Fuzion).

 

1e The beginning

2e is really 1er1 (cleaned up multipower)

3e is really 1er2 (combined content from Champions II and Champions III with 1er1)

4e is really 2e

*The Champions 4e Softcover and Champions 4e Deluxe are really like 2er1 and 2er2

5e is really 3e

5er is really 3er (it almost qualifies for its own edition status as 4e since it had more changes from 3e than 1er2 did from 1e)

6e is really 4e

CC and FHC are really 4e the Clift Notes editions

 

HM

 

Honestly, the main difference between 4e and 5e didn't exist on a system level. For me, the primary difference was stylistic: granularity, lawyerly-prose, and sheer verbosity. It felt less open because of how it was presented, and the amount of additional options and ways of doing things it suggested, but it was, to a great extent, the same game.

[Alcamtar]

Honestly, the main difference between 4e and 5e didn't exist on a system level. For me, the primary difference was stylistic: granularity, lawyerly-prose, and sheer verbosity. It felt less open because of how it was presented, and the amount of additional options and ways of doing things it suggested, but it was, to a great extent, the same game.

 

That was also my feeling. For me it broke down to:

- perceived reduction in freedom/creativity since the game was more "predigested"

- perceived inflation of certain things like damage and OCV. Felt like the old +5/x2 "rule" was altered

- increased complexity in published NPC and Power writeups. Change from "broad brush" to superdetailed (with bonus trivia!)