Converting V and V to Champions

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I'm looking for rules for converting from Villains and Vigilantes to Hero system. I don't need converted characters themselves...just guidelines for doing so. I've looked around and can't seem to find them.

[rjd59]

I believe this may help! PDF print is light so I included doc also. 

v&v to hero.doc v&v to hero.pdf

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Hmm...ok. That chart doesn't seem to handle PRE at all. I don't think VandV Charisma as both PRE and EGO works for all characters. Definitely helps though. Thank you.

[HeroGM]

I can get some of the OLD conversion notes...from the 80s...

 

Severely under powers the V&V characters though.

[dsatow]

One of the problems with the V&V conversions for HERO is that the V&V characters in their own game system vary wildly in power the original old system.  You can have characters that did 1d4+2 with characters that did 1d20+6.

 

It is better to use the system numbers and dice as a comparison to power level for the HERO conversion than to use a straight algorithm to convert.  Even if the conversion says that the power only does 6d6 Blast damage, if the character is in a 12d6 game, think about making it at least 10d6 if not 12. 

[Hugh Neilson]

Agreed, dsatow.  I find V&V characters are better written up as "OK, how would I do these powers in Hero" than any formulaic conversion.  The games are simply too different.

 

One key difference is that 1d4+2 will pass some damage along to the target in V&V.  A character like, say, Nightcrawler can have impressive agility and speed (high DEX), Teleportation, Stealth and 1d4+2 or 1d6 damage, and get along fine in V&V.  He'll average 3.5 or 4.5 damage.  That big guy with 1d20+6 or 4d6 will average 14 or 16.5 - three or four times as much damage.  

 

But in Hero,  we have defenses, and that changes the playing field.  That big burly guy might have a 14 - 15d6 attack, passing 24 - 27.5 damage past defenses of 25.  If we want Nightcrawler to do minor damage, 1/3 to 1/4 as much, that's not achieved by giving him 1/3 to 1/4 of the base damage - 3 1/2 to 4d6.  That just bounces off.  He needs to pass 6 - 8 damage past 25 defenses, which needs an average roll of 31 - 33, or 9 - 10d6.  That's still a pretty wide range,  but matches some older 1e to 2e published enemies.

 

What's the V&V multiple actions rule again?  As I recall, they rolled 1d10 + Agility for initiative, the highest roll went first, then we count down and each character gets another action every 15 points lower on the count.   So if our big, burly dude has 10 Agility, he'll move once or twice in each sequence.  Nightcrawler might have an Agility of 30, and be guaranteed three actions, or twice as many as that big, burly guy.  That may mean the big guy gets a SPD of 4 (if that's our "low end Super" SPD) so Nightcrawler, to act twice as often, gets a SPD of 8.  That's also a broad range, but not wholly inconsistent with those old published characters.

 

As time has gone on, however, we've seen a trend towards the mean in Hero, so we see "campaign cap is 12d6 and 6 SPD", and we get both Burly Guy and Nightcrawler with 12d6 attacks (maybe 11d6 at the low end) and 6 SPD (maybe 5 at the low end).

 

What all this long-winded example boils down to is that the translation between systems needs to capture relative effectiveness in the game the characters will be used in,  and that's generally not practical to achieve with formulaic conversions.

[Sketchpad]

Like @dsatow and @Hugh Neilson I always found mechanical conversion charts a bit uneven. I always recommend looking at the concept of a character and rebuild them in the system, eyeing various caps from the sheet as benchmarks.