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Fantasy & Champions Complete


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Hello, i am playing HERO from 5th edition revised, i am trying to introduce HERO 6th edition to as many RPG players as i can and recently bought Champions and Fantasy complete for 2 of them, they really like the books but my personal opinion is that is very difficult to play/ understand the book without having the 6E1 and 6E2 books nearby.Things like computing damage classes for advantaged power(and why you do so), or adding damage or even minimum damage are so minimally worded and without examples in the complete books that if these are your first and only HERO 6th edition you have to resort to the forums to clarify them or have an INT score of 20+ to work them out on your own(DC,adding damage,missing DC table).its a pity for such a wonderful and loved system as HERO.I hope there will be an errata on them soon.

 

P.S. otherwise from minimun wording i like the books too and congratulate every HERO product available and the effort of the writers.

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  • 6 months later...

I skipped straight from playing 5th edition, to running 6th edition using Champion/Fantasy Hero Complete. Honestly I never felt like I was missing all that much by using CC/FHC exclusively over the 6th edition core rulebooks. Although minimally worded, I feel like all of the rules are there, clearly and concisely defined. You just have to read each paragraph with a careful eye because of how condensed CC/FHC are; If you blink, you are likely to miss something.

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I feel there's got to be a happy medium between the minimalist approach of the Complete books and the material bloat of 6e1/6e2. The 4e HSR hit that happy medium, IMO, but it didn't have quite as many advanced rules/mechanics as 6e, and could adequately describe itself in 260 pages. It would probably take around 400 pages to stuff all the cruft of "core" 6e into a single, well-presented volume, but that's better in my view than what we have now, which is either too little or too much.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Making the the transition from 5thr to CC. Yeah I hit a bump or two but like Cantteiped said, read carefully. I like the thinner volume. Could they have used perhaps a few more example? Maybe but isn't that the problem? People complain about 6th being too big with too much information then complain that's there not enough in the Completes. P.s. I also own the Basic for 6th and it's missing stuff intentionally-CC is a better deal.

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I would agree with the posts above.  Champions complete has everything you need however I find it a bit lacking in terms of the examples of powers that are in the 6e rule book margins.  The "Champions Powers" book gives a lot of great examples for powers.  So I agree completely with Kimmitt's post above.

 

That said, sometimes my self control is lacking and I end up buying more books.  Some other books that are quite good for examples are: the Villian Teams book and the 6e Grimoire. 

 

 

 

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Back in the day, power examples came from the Enemies books, and later, the organization books. There is really no need to stuff more unreadable text into the margins of any book, or bloat the core rules with material that is more effectively delivered through products that have tremendous utility above and beyond their incidental value as example providers (like books full of villains, monsters, etc.).

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On 12/11/2017 at 1:23 PM, zslane said:

Back in the day, power examples came from the Enemies books, and later, the organization books. There is really no need to stuff more unreadable text into the margins of any book, or bloat the core rules with material that is more effectively delivered through products that have tremendous utility above and beyond their incidental value as example providers (like books full of villains, monsters, etc.).

 

Maybe I'm a bit nuts but I like the examples in the margins.  It is not the cleanest look but the examples illustrate what is being described in the rules.  Clearly everyone has different preferences.

 

On 12/11/2017 at 6:24 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Foolish victor I believe why there isn’t as many examples in CC was due to page count.

 

I agree completely.  My only problem with it is the "Complete" in "Champions Complete."  If it was "complete" there would be less of need for examples imho.  just my 2 cents...

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Foolish victor I believe when 5th came out (not revised version) there was also the notion that Hero system wanted to give as few examples as needed. Thw reason is that since Hero is a toolkit, You should ultimately decide how a Power is written up rather than an “official” write up. It’s quite the condrum that Hero has. Btw I’m one of those people who likes a lot of examples.  I was never super imagitive with power builds until later. Also I use to be it has to be official camp too. Now I feel confident enough to take something and tweak it to my satisfaction.

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Examples are good for inspiration. For sparking one's own design ideas in a direction you might not have previously thought of. However, I feel that if a game needs a ton of examples just to adequately explain the core rules, then something is terribly wrong with the game (or its presentation). Players should be able to read the rules, look at an example or two, and then go and build their own powers/characters/vehicles/whatever.

 

I remember reading the 2nd edition rulebook (back in 1982) and then spending all my time in school making characters. I would occasionally look at Enemies #1 just to see the variety of character builds the publisher came up with, and they were instructional to a degree, but they weren't essential to learning or understanding the game. The basic rulebook took care of that all by itself, and it only had a smattering of examples.

 

Contrast that with books filled with collections of pre-built stuff. Bestiaries, grimoires, and armories are great for saving time, especially in cases where a monster or spell is going to be the same each time it is encountered (i.e., there is only one type of bugbear, only one type of stone giant, only one fireball spell, only one version of the AK-47, etc.). They are also useful as working examples of the system in action, but that's only incidental. Their real value is in providing generic items that don't need special differentiation, something that I don't really feel applies to superpowers (i.e., a "database of superpowers" is actually less helpful than it sounds, IMO).

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6 hours ago, zslane said:

Examples are good for inspiration. For sparking one's own design ideas in a direction you might not have previously thought of. However, I feel that if a game needs a ton of examples just to adequately explain the core rules, then something is terribly wrong with the game (or its presentation). Players should be able to read the rules, look at an example or two, and then go and build their own powers/characters/vehicles/whatever.

 

I remember reading the 2nd edition rulebook (back in 1982) and then spending all my time in school making characters. I would occasionally look at Enemies #1 just to see the variety of character builds the publisher came up with, and they were instructional to a degree, but they weren't essential to learning or understanding the game. The basic rulebook took care of that all by itself, and it only had a smattering of examples.

 

Contrast that with books filled with collections of pre-built stuff. Bestiaries, grimoires, and armories are great for saving time, especially in cases where a monster or spell is going to be the same each time it is encountered (i.e., there is only one type of bugbear, only one type of stone giant, only one fireball spell, only one version of the AK-47, etc.). They are also useful as working examples of the system in action, but that's only incidental. Their real value is in providing generic items that don't need special differentiation, something that I don't really feel applies to superpowers (i.e., a "database of superpowers" is actually less helpful than it sounds, IMO).

 

The danger with pre-built stuff is that players will often seem to defer to the books, and not use it as a launchpad for their own ideas. It's sometimes difficult to get the player of the wizard in my current FH game to understand that it's not D&D, and spells can be modified all sorts of ways. It's not an issue for me, because I started with FH1e, which had only a handful of example spells in the book (and some of those were embedded in the descriptions of the sample characters).

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On 12/17/2017 at 7:24 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

I also want to say that I’ve always enjoyed writes ups that explained why they went a certain way especially if they had to break a rule in light of game considerstions.


So do I!
I'm new about HERO and still learning it using the 6th edition, but I still can't wrap my head around it. That's why I like to read more about it, especially about the in-depth explanation

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/10/2017 at 5:58 PM, dsatow said:

My suggestion would be, buy the CC book and get the PDFs for 6E1&2.  They are much more usable as a searchable document than as an extra 5 pounds of books in your backpack.

I totally agree. Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete are very concise and compact. If you want examples and numerous situations where rules can apply then you can always look it up in the HERO System 6e volumes 1 & 2 PDFs.

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On ‎12‎/‎31‎/‎2017 at 8:35 PM, Chacha Dwi said:


So do I!
I'm new about HERO and still learning it using the 6th edition, but I still can't wrap my head around it. That's why I like to read more about it, especially about the in-depth explanation

 

If you have any specific questions feel free to start a thread asking.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says you could get a half dozen answers.

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