New Roll20 Character Sheet - Hero System 6e Heroic

[Villain In Glasses]

Hello everyone,

 

I’d like to announce the availability of a new Hero System character sheet for Roll20 intended for heroic-level campaigns. “Hero System 6e Heroic” is available alongside Darren’s “Hero System 6e” in Roll20’s game options. This is an entirely new character sheet that uses no code from the earlier sheet.

 

HS6e Heroic has a different design philosophy motivated by the needs of heroic settings such as Fantasy Hero and Star Hero. Over the last year or so I worked on a Star Hero campaign, but felt stymied because the existing character sheet was inappropriate for the setting. Eventually I decided I would either have to drop the idea or learn html and javascript and develop my own sheet. I hope the result makes running and playing Hero games easier, especially for new players. The project took about three months.

 

Features include:  

 

1) A bookkeeping system, which hopefully provides a full accounting of points spent on characteristics, skills, powers, talents, perks, and complications. Includes support for skill enhancers, group levels, and overall levels and calculates skill rolls.

2) Self-contained. No custom APIs needed. Usable with a basic free Roll20 account. Those with a pro-level account may still find the Hero Roller script useful for more flexible macros.

3) Heavy focus on skills. Support for 30 general skills, 7 combat skills, 6 martial skills, and 9 languages.

4) Support for 10 powers and/or frameworks.

5) Designed for purchased equipment, armor, and weapons. Adds weight and calculates END, DCV, and dexterity penalties.

6) Support for normal and killing damage weapons. Rolls and calculates BODY and STUN of each attack type. (Only recently possible without custom APIs.)

7) Uses basic armor activation instead of hit locations since this is simpler and probably more appropriate for heroic settings.

 

Some caveats:

 

1) Unfortunately, you will not be able to easily switch between the two 6e Roll20 character sheets. The code bases and lists of attributes are really very different. Although it should be possible to write some kind of translation script, I don’t have plans to do this.

2) I should mention that except for a few items needed to support the underlying math there are no lists of skills, power descriptions, power advantages, etc. You will need official Hero Games source material to actually fill out the character sheet and understand how to create a character and play the game. I am intrigued by eepjr24’s Hero Designer to Roll20 import script and may look into porting it. No promises though.

3) The new API for displaying your avatar on-sheet is implemented, but only supported on the Dev Server at this time. I expect it to be approved for general use soon.

 

I’ve tested my code in Chrome, Firefox, Safari (Mac and iPad), and MS Edge. There are some cosmetic differences between browsers, but nothing major. Roll20 on iPad Safari is harder to use, but it does work. Note that although Safari and Edge aren’t officially supported by Roll20, that hasn’t stopped me from using Safari as my primary browser in Roll20 games.

 

I welcome your comments and bug reports. I’m thinking about ways to improve handling of basic and martial maneuvers, possible optional support for hit locations, and general ways to improve usability.

 

GitHub Readme with screenshots: https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/blob/master/HeroSystem6eHeroic/README.md

 

Cheers,

 

Villain In Glasses

[Villain In Glasses]

I've added support for the optional hit location system. The sheet will calculate OCV penalties (with PSL support), roll target locations (for head shots, body shots, etc.), and calculate STUN for killing attacks. On the sheet weapons checked as AoE will not use hit locations, so the system can be turned on or off on a case by case basis. Whether or not an AoE weapon should use hit locations seems to be a GM-decision thing so this seemed a convenient marker. An AoE tag is useful with or without hit locations anyway.

 

Roll20's servers should start using the updated version in a few days.

 

[Villain In Glasses]

I've done lots of improvements here and there since early August, including:

• Added perception rolls.
• Improvements to weapon and shield damage so that any can be normal or killing.
• Added option to auto-deduct endurance costs.
• Made improvements to the powers are used, including activation rolls.
• Added buttons to display descriptions of martial maneuvers, perks, talents, and complications in chat.
• Added a button to send dexterity to the Roll20 turn tracker and described a method in the readme for displaying the current segment.
• Plus many little things I can't remember.

The Dev server's ability to display your avatar on-sheet has still not been approved for general use by Roll20. Still hoping that gets sorted out soon. For now a text field can be used to fill in the gap.

 

I've reached a point where just about everything on my to-do list is done, except maybe implementing a way to import Hero Designer files. I have purchased Hero Designer and do plan to look into it.

 

I've attached a panel screenshot showing all six pages.

[CAL]

Thanks for really nice looking form.  We are using for new world.  Was thinking if backing up to old version for load ability,  but couldn't get that working.  So, back to this version.   

A little worried about switching back and forth causing toon corruption,  but too late now.   

 

Hope the import gets working for this newer version.   

[Villain In Glasses]

Hi Cal,

 

Thanks. It's great to hear that you are finding it useful. I haven't had a lot of feedback so if you find any bugs or have suggestions please don't hesitate to post them here.

 

I'm in the process of relocating for a new job, but I would like to get the importer working. Hearing some interest from the community helps.

 

Cheers,

 

Villain

[Villain In Glasses]

I can add that I have made progress on a Hero Designer importer. It's only a start, but my current HDE and Roll20 API script will import all the standard characteristics and background text into the sheet. Basically, Page 1 of the Roll20 sheet above. The next bits will be harder to implement, but since I have a skeleton working, it should be only a matter of effort.

[Stonewild]

Good to hear you have the skeleton.  Exciting.  

I can't wait to try it out.  I have some coding experience of the ancient sort. I can read and steal code, but not enough experience or time to do real work.   

Let me know if and when I can help debugging. 

 

Oh, this is Cal.  Some how I ended up with 2 accounts.  .and I keep forgetting which is primary.  Oh well

 

 

 

[Villain In Glasses]

Thanks, Stonewild. When I get there, debugging will be pretty useful. Hero Designer can do a lot of stuff and that might cause unexpected issues. 

[CAL]

4 hours ago, Villain In Glasses said:

Hero Designer can do a lot of stuff and that might cause unexpected issues. 

In other sheets, I noticed confusion around item names in HDC.  Several attributes/ fields can make up the  name. Even in HD, there seems to be confusion. THE HD name is not required but tends to override the default descriptions.   If you have the space, maybe you can keep all and decide later what to display. In my games,  I put priority on the name because name is the special effect description for my toons and a short hand of the power. 

Bringing over Notes and such would be nice, but is there space?

Just having access to the verbiage of each power / skill / item without any associated dice roll functions or system edits on game mechanics would be a win.   Target numbers are way too complex, so plug in a default until the player can adjust.  The game is far too complex to edit powers in roll20.  

 

[Villain In Glasses]

Good to know about names. Until I get into, it's hard to say how it will work out.

 

Each power, talent/perk, and complication on the sheet has space for notes. So I should be able to bring them over (within some reasonable size limit).

 

I agree on the dice rolls. There's only so much one can do.

[CAL]

My players manually entered toons last night. 

It went really well.   Most don't know the Hero system.  The two of us that know the system were able to talk them through it.  Overall Everyone was very pleased with the experience.  There were a couple of suggestions for improvement, but I can't remember the details off the top of my head.   I'll double check and follow up with the players before reporting recommendations. 

Our biggest issue ended up being a player(user) error; we fixed him :-).

 

  

[Villain In Glasses]

Awesome!

[Villain In Glasses]

Update on the Hero Designer importer: the skeleton has some joints and internal organs.

 

The HDE+Roll20 Importer now does complications, perks, and talents. This is Page 5 of the character sheet. Still lots to do and I'm tackling the easier bits first.

[CAL]

Low hanging fruit!  I like it!

[Villain In Glasses]

I made a lot of progress, but didn't quite finish before my move. Powers, equipment, weapons, armor, and martial arts maneuvers are pretty much done. The last page to do is skills, which I don't expect to cause too many problems. There are some ambiguities like group levels that may not work right, but overall I don't think it will be too bad. The hardest thing to deal with so far has been shields, because they are multipowers.

 

After skills I will need to clean up the importer code and remove stuff from the D&D Beyond Importer source material that isn't going to be used. I'm going to shoot for end of January if possible.

 

Does anyone know if there is a prefab package with armor that uses hit locations? It doesn't matter what genre.

[eepjr24]

Just now seeing this, but if you have any questions about what my code is doing or why I did something a particular way, feel free to hit me up here or on the Hero Discord.

 

- E

[Villain In Glasses]

Hi all,

 

Sorry to be offline for awhile. I'm just now feeling like I am getting my head above water at my new job.

 

And thanks for the offer E, I may take you up on it. 

 

-Villain

[Villain In Glasses]

Not a huge update, but I've submitted changes to the sheet to preserve its appearance in Roll20's new dark mode. They should appear in a few days.

[Baron Wombat]

Hi ViG! I was searching for a way to play Fantasy Hero on Roll2 (been forever since I played, will be rereading my books), and found this thread. I want to thank you for your hard work on creating the character sheet!  I just made a new test game on Roll20 and used your sheet to add points to a test character. Looks like it does all the character creation math which can be off-putting to many players. 

 

I have some questions, please feel free to tell me to go read the books if the answers are in there. 

1. Is there anything I need to know about running a Fantasy Hero campaign on Roll20 besides using your character sheets? (I gather from reading this thread that the players will be manually entering their custom skill and talent info into the sheet themselves)
2. There are Skills. When I create a new Skill "Pick Locks" and assign it to Dex, the roll results are a Base and Roll.
   1. The Base formula is showing as 0+0. What is the Base field, and how does the Characteristics influence it?
   2. I can see the Roll is 3D6. Is that drawn from the Characteristic?
3. You have room for 6 combat skills. 
   1. There is no Roll Button for these? How do players use them? Do we define the combat skills, then reference them in the Skills column to roll them?

 

 

[Villain In Glasses]

Hi Baron,

 

I'm glad you discovered the sheet. 🙂

 

1) Yes, everything has to be entered manually.

2.1) When you select a skill type such as DEX, the sheet will calculate your success roll based on the number of points you spend. For a DEX skill, 1 point or "familiarity with" is (8-), 2 points is (10-), 3 points is (DEX/5 + 9), and after that you are adding skill levels at +1 for each additional 2 points. You will have to click in another field or anywhere else really to get the result to update. This is a limitation of Roll20 that I couldn't find a solution to. It's not really a big deal however.

2.2) Every skill check roll is 3d6, with a success being a result less than or equal to your skill plus or minus GM-assigned bonuses or penalties.

3) Combat rolls are on the "Gear" page next to each weapon or maneuver. There are enough variables in combat that the GM really needs to step in and determine the chance for success. Even combat skill levels are very flexible as they can be assigned to things like OCV, DCV, or damage. HERO isn't really as complicated as it first appears, but it does give players a lot of choices.

 

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you get a game going and how it works out. 

 

Cheers,

 

ViG

[Villain In Glasses]

A short update on the importer. It is mostly feature complete now. It's got warts, but it works. I need to do a couple of changes to the sheet itself and then I'll need to do more internal testing before asking for testing help.

 

Cheers,

 

ViG

[Villain In Glasses]

New update live on Roll20. Basic equipment, general skills, and powers can be rearranged. A seemingly small thing, but it took a bit of work. The Hero Designer importer effort really elevated this feature as a priority. One really needs to be able to tidy up after an import. 🙂 Talents, perks, and complications would be good candidates for this feature too. I'll add them to the list.

 

Still tracking down and fixing bugs on the importer.

[Villain In Glasses]

I've made good progress on the importer. It now imports the 19 NPCs from Dead Orc Pass. 🙃

 

Some of these characters have really high points costs. I have attempted to capture powers, talents, and perks that go over the sheet's limit. These are saved in the notes fields. I have some ideas on improving the sheet for these cases. A couple of the characters have over 50 skills. I'm not sure what I will do about that if anything. I don't want to spend too much time on unusual cases.

 

My next step is to move on to another character pack and work my way through whatever issues I may encounter. There's been more than a few surprises and head-scratchers.

 

[Villain In Glasses]

I've worked my way through the heroes, villains, and monsters in the Monster Hunter character pack, which is about 90 characters. This is a pretty good pack for testing since just about every file has a lot of powers. I had to fix many things big and small as well as write some workarounds for various issues with compound powers. Fortunately there is a limited set common to many monsters.

 

A few things have become clear after working through this pack:

 

(A) I probably need to add more power slots to the sheet. While ten is probably fine for most characters, it is not unusual for a monster to have 12-15 powers. Many of them are nearly one-line powers, but it would be good to accommodate them. I don't want to get distracted so this will be a project for after the importer is released.

 

(B) I'd like to add a sheet option for automaton type monsters so that the total point costs use appropriate base characteristic values. This might be a simple change.

 

(C ) Modifiers to stats, usually reduced END for STR, aren't supported on the sheet. I wrote a workaround that should work when importing monsters by guessing an appropriate base cost, but it is a bit of a hack. I think this is a minor problem, but it would be nice to add support. Not a high priority, however.

 

I'm going to work through at least one more pack of characters before release. Sci-fi type characters might present issues I haven't covered yet, particularly with equipment, AI, robots, etc.

 

 

[Villain In Glasses]

I finished adding "Takes No STUN" as an option to the character sheet. This should be approved for Roll20 in a few days. The importer automatically sets this option when it detects the power. It's probably not that useful for PCs, but good for NPCs.