Tracking down the origins of some Perks and Talents

[Joe Walsh]

I'm trying to track down where the Positive Reputation Perk first appeared, and where the Talents Absolute Range Sense and Combat Luck first appeared.

 

As far as I've been able to tell, they all first appeared in the original release of the 5e rulebook.

 

Is that correct, or did they appear somewhere before that (perhaps with different names)?

 

[Duke Bushido]

Not at home right now to ch3ck, but yes to both.,with the cabeat that I believe there was a luck-based combat luck an edition or two prior to that, as opposed to an,DEF-based combat luck,as in 5e.

 

I cannot doubl3,check right now; it may have originally,been a third-party creation.

 

 

[steriaca]

I remember Positive Reputation as simply Reputation in 4ed (the BBB). Same with Absolute Range Sense, othoe I may be misremembering it's origin book.

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

I think Reputation was around in 2e, likely from Champions II and III, only split to "positive"and "negative" later.

 

I recall our group using a (home-grown) "roll with the punch" limited Damage Reduction similar to Combat Luck before that talent appeared - can't recall whether it first showed up in 4e or 5e, though.

[rravenwood]

I know it's not exactly what you're after, but the Reputation Disadvantage first appeared (according to my notes) in the original Fantasy Hero and was then also presented in Danger International.  My attempt to track the first appearance of game mechanics petered out after DI, so I can only otherwise say that neither Absolute Range Sense nor Combat Luck were a thing up to that point.

[Duke Bushido]

Rolling with the punch has been a viable option since 1e.  When I get home, I will double-check, but I _know_ it is in 2e.

[Joe Walsh]

True, prior to 5e (and in 5e) the negative aspect of reputation was handled by the Disadvantage 'Reputation'.

 

But I haven't been able to recall the idea of a positive Reputation that you have to pay points for appearing prior to 5e. It's just such an obvious thing, and 5e mainly compiled the rules that appeared in supplements (and elaborated on most of the rules), that I was just curious whether it was entirely new or something that had appeared before.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Reputation from it's earliest use as a disadvantage did not preclude that reputation from being positive.  There was nothing in it that requured the reputation itself to be negative.  

 

We had many superheroes (and still do) that had Reputation: does not kill. Or reputation: honorable.  Or Reputation: protects innocents at all costs, and even reputation: pleasantly affable.

 

They were disadvantageous because having that known may cause problems:

 

When you are bluffing the bad guys, you dont want them to remember that you actually will not kill them, and arwnt very likely to harm them if you can avoid it.   You dont wamt them to know they can blast a support beam,and leave you stuck holding up the entire subway station while they make a get away, ir that taking a hostage will absolutely get you to stop whatever you are doing.

 

Beyond that, though, it is troublesome when citizen fans remember that are a great and feiendly guy, thet are morw likelt to walk,right up and introduce themselves, snap a few selfies, and generally,get in the way.

 

Here is the problem with reputation:

 

It doesnt really fit entirely into the category of disadvantage.  Remember that there is the "how often does it become a problem /what is the typical reaction upon being recognized" toggles.

 

You can take that at a zero value.

 

What?  The reaction is always favorable?  

 

What?  It is never a problem?

 

Yeah.  You could always do that.  You could just take it at no value at all if you wanted, just the rolls to either be recognized or have a thing known about you but for it to never actually,impact anything other than role play.

 

I have no idea why it was expanded into a separate thing when the more logical thing (to me) would have been to make Reputation its very own thing, with the roll values, etc, and price or bonus deoending on the positive benefits of the rolls (people welcome me and offer assistence because they know I only do nobke things!)  Or the rebated points foe a negative reputation (I cannot escape the hirrirs of my day as Kristoff, Bloody Butcher of Isleighton Bay!).

 

It made enough sense to us that this is hiw we house ruled it the first time a player wanted a character"s reputation to "open doors" for him, and we have played it that way ever since.

 

 

It makes a heck of a lot more sense than making a whole new thing such that there are two entirely different mechanics for the same exact meta thing.

 

[Joe Walsh]

10 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Reputation from it's earliest use as a disadvantage did not preclude that reputation from being positive.  There was nothing in it that requured the reputation itself to be negative.  

 

Good point, they could have handled Reputation like Charges, with positive, negative, and neutral options. Unusual Appearance could have been handled that way as well. That's been obvious since at least when Victory Games' James Bond 007 was released. That game made being ugly and good looking both cost less than it cost to be average looking, since in either case you're more memorable, which is a liability for any secret agent. With HERO, it could have been left up to the player what game effect they wanted for their character's appearance. Rather, what they wanted the most frequent effect to be, since lots of things can be a positive or negative given the right situation (as you point out below).

 

10 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

We had many superheroes (and still do) that had Reputation: does not kill. Or reputation: honorable.  Or Reputation: protects innocents at all costs, and even reputation: pleasantly affable.

 

They were disadvantageous because having that known may cause problems:

 

When you are bluffing the bad guys, you dont want them to remember that you actually will not kill them, and arwnt very likely to harm them if you can avoid it.   You dont wamt them to know they can blast a support beam,and leave you stuck holding up the entire subway station while they make a get away, ir that taking a hostage will absolutely get you to stop whatever you are doing.

 

Beyond that, though, it is troublesome when citizen fans remember that are a great and feiendly guy, thet are morw likelt to walk,right up and introduce themselves, snap a few selfies, and generally,get in the way.

 

Here is the problem with reputation:

 

It doesnt really fit entirely into the category of disadvantage.  Remember that there is the "how often does it become a problem /what is the typical reaction upon being recognized" toggles.

 

You can take that at a zero value.

 

What?  The reaction is always favorable?  

 

What?  It is never a problem?

 

Yeah.  You could always do that.  You could just take it at no value at all if you wanted, just the rolls to either be recognized or have a thing known about you but for it to never actually,impact anything other than role play.

 

I have no idea why it was expanded into a separate thing when the more logical thing (to me) would have been to make Reputation its very own thing, with the roll values, etc, and price or bonus deoending on the positive benefits of the rolls (people welcome me and offer assistence because they know I only do nobke things!)  Or the rebated points foe a negative reputation (I cannot escape the hirrirs of my day as Kristoff, Bloody Butcher of Isleighton Bay!).

 

It made enough sense to us that this is hiw we house ruled it the first time a player wanted a character"s reputation to "open doors" for him, and we have played it that way ever since.

 

It makes a heck of a lot more sense than making a whole new thing such that there are two entirely different mechanics for the same exact meta thing.

 

That brings back good memories of the early days, back when we only needed to concern ourselves with The One True Way To Play Each Game when we spent the bucks to be at a gaming convention. Not that people don't houserule today, and not that people didn't send in SASEs asking for an official rulings back in the day, but the One True Way approach does seem to have become steadily more common over the years to the point that the former is less a part of the hobby than it once seemed to be.

 

Speaking of which, as I go through the rulebooks and rule-bearing supplements to remind my aging brain what was newly minted for a given edition, what was changed, and what was carried forward without change (and, not incidentally, to distract myself from Real Life), the books are working against me in frustrating and all-too-familiar ways.

 

4e: "Here's are nice lists of Skills, Perks, Talents, and Powers. What? You want a list of Advantages? Limitations? Disadvantages? GTFO! Go through every page you lazy bum!"

5e: "Yeah, what they said. Well....OK. I'll give you Function Tables, but they won't be useful for your purpose."

5eR: "(sigh) Fine. Here's your frickin' summary tables."

 

Or:

4e: "I'll make separate chapters for Skills, Perks, Talents, Powers, Advantages, Limitations, Frameworks, and Disadvantages. Then I'll sprinkle a few Powers and Power Modifiers throughout the rulesbook. They'll be like Easter Eggs!"

5e: "A lot of people say eggs are cheaper by the dozen, but if you buy wholesale you can get them in crates of 180! Wouldn't it be fun to try finding that many Easter Eggs?"

 

Or:

4e BBB: "Index? You want an index?? What a loser."

4e HSR: "Well, OK, you can have an index, but not a useful one."

5e: "Here's a comprehensive index. The index of your dreams! But it's in a font size that only an ant could appreciate. Enjoy!"

 

(No disrespect to the folks behind those editions. I've produced enough stuff in my life to know that there are always compromises, and the product is never as good as you would have wanted it to be if you'd had unlimited time and money. Just having a bit of fun after spending too many hours poring over HERO System rules.)

 

I guess that's a good reason to stick with 2e, which is small enough that a list of what's on each page can be kept in your head.

 

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Rolling with the punch has been a viable option since 1e.  When I get home, I will double-check, but I _know_ it is in 2e.

 

Sorry if I confused the issue.  My "roll with the punch" comment was not the maneuver, but a Damage Reduction power limited to require the character be aware of the attack, and conscious and mobile to be able to roll with it.  Where Combal Luck provides defenses, this mechanic provided a reduction to the damage taken.

 

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Reputation from it's earliest use as a disadvantage did not preclude that reputation from being positive.  There was nothing in it that required the reputation itself to be negative.  

 

As your examples set out, it was expected that the consequences would be negative, much like it was expected the consequences of Distinctive Features would be negative. Being frighteningly ugly which enhanced fear-based PRE effects became a function of negative COM, with a rule that positive and negative COM both cost the same CP, with one enhancing rolls to be friendly and the other enhancing rolls to be frightening.

 

Today, Reputation is a lot like Appearance - it can be positive (enhancing certain rolls) or negative (penalizing certain rolls) and might have some positive or negative effects on the side.  I've never minded Complications/Disadvantages having the occasional positive result so long as, on balance, they added more challenges than benefits.  The greater the net challenge, the more points the complication was worth.  But where significant positive and negative effects arise, having an ability for positive results and a complication for negative results makes sense, in allowing the results to be split off.

 

Recalling an old suggestion that Spider-Man have both Luck and Unluck - whenever things are going too easy, things seem to fall in his way, but when the chips are down, fortune tends to break his way.

 

I would love to see Charges lose its inherent o END.  Just because you can only call upon the Malevolent Mists of Mephisto four times a day, that does not mean the calling is not physically draining,

[Ninja-Bear]

@GM Joe, since you use Second Edition, do you use any House Riles or import any rules from the newer editions? I have Third and do like it until i try a certain thing and then go, well the rules don’t allow this. For example Leaping takes a Full Phase.

[Joe Walsh]

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@GM Joe, since you use Second Edition, do you use any House Riles or import any rules from the newer editions? I have Third and do like it until i try a certain thing and then go, well the rules don’t allow this. For example Leaping takes a Full Phase.

 

Sorry, @Ninja-Bear, I didn't write that clearly. I intended that as an acknowledgement of Duke's favored version.

 

I normally run 4e. I used to run it heavily modified by house rules and stuff I imported from other editions, but my current project is to go back to 4e RAW, add rravenwood's extremely helpful compiled errata, then assess anew what I need from the 4e supplements that contain rules (principally Ninja HERO, Fantasy HERO, Western HERO, Almanac 1, Dark Champions, and An Eye for an Eye), and, in light of that, what I really need (not "just in case it comes up" or "but it's cool" like I'm wont to do) from 5e and finally in light of all that what I really, really need from 6e. (Not because I hate 6e or 5e; I just want to only add or change things that are likely to be of great use, and not clutter it up with stuff I think is clever and such like I've done in the past).

 

But if I weren't running 4e? I'd probably be running 3e. The saddle-stitched version (because it lays flat and keeps the rules to a separate booklet vs. the perfect-bound version). 2e was my first, and is of course also saddle stitched, but 3e's layout and typography are so much easier on my aging eyes. (You've been here a long time; I'm embarrassed to say that somehow I never picked up on the fact that you were running 3e. My apologies.)

 

Anyway, before coming up with any house rules, why not look to other editions for clarifications and/or new rules (if you have access to them)? Your example of Leaping is an excellent one. To me, 4e's final Leaping sentence "It is possible to perform a half-distance leap as a half Phase action" is implied by the earlier sentence both 3e and 4e share ("A standing leap is only half as far") so it seems like importing that explicit statement shouldn't cause any problems.

 

Or does that sort of thing cause acrimony in your group?

 

[Duke Bushido]

Forgive me,for,not quoting, Hugh, but I can only get here via phone, and I just discovered that quoting / editing is a massive pain on this phone.

 

At any rate:

 

I would like to see Reputation to be a separate thing:  reputation.  Like the disadvantage version, break it into elements such as how extreme the reputation is, how extreme the reaction is, how impeding or beneficial the reactions or reputaion is, etc:  the negative elements would work as they do:  negative points (disadvantage bonus, sort of) that ultimately reduce the reputation or even provide build,points. Etc.

 

In short, a sliding scale that makes it one mechanic to allow customizing any reputation, good (costs points),or ill (rebates points).  While what we have now works well,in a clear good guys / bad guys world, if someone wants  to do a more shades-of-grey kind of thing, the current set up is a bit clunky.

[Hugh Neilson]

52 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

I would like to see Reputation to be a separate thing:  reputation.  Like the disadvantage version, break it into elements such as how extreme the reputation is, how extreme the reaction is, how impeding or beneficial the reactions or reputaion is, etc:  the negative elements would work as they do:  negative points (disadvantage bonus, sort of) that ultimately reduce the reputation or even provide build,points. Etc.

 

In short, a sliding scale that makes it one mechanic to allow customizing any reputation, good (costs points),or ill (rebates points).  While what we have now works well,in a clear good guys / bad guys world, if someone wants  to do a more shades-of-grey kind of thing, the current set up is a bit clunky.

 

As I recall, it was 4e that made the switch from "multiple disadvantages of the same type generate less points" to "you get up to X points of total disadvantages, with a  maximum of Y from any category", that model works better pre-4e.

 

As an example for those wondering, in 1 - 3e, my character could have three 30 point Hunted, but the third would only count half, so 30 + 30 + 15 Disadvantage.  But I could take 100 points in Hunteds (4 30 points, first 2 are 30 points each, next 2 halved at 15 each, and 2 more 20 pointers, quartered to 5 each - only dropped to 20 for easier math).  And if I scraped together 300 points in Disadvantages, I had 300 extra points to build with.

 

In 4e or higher, setoffs on either side would change the structure. This created the "Daredevil Conundrum" where 50 points of Enhanced Senses and 50 points of Physical Limitations from loss of normal senses meant you had 50 less points to spend elsewhere.  That eventually morphed into selling back normal senses.  If you sold back 5" (10m) Running, you could buy +5" (10m) Flight, but if you just added the Physical Limitation "cannot walk or run", you had to pay for the Flight with points that could not be used for other abilities of the character.

 

That doesn't mean we could not price Rep by adding up the positive and negative elements, then adding or subtracting the net, or making it either a purchased ability or a Disad/Complication depending on where the numbers settled, but a decision in that regard would have to be made.

 

If I had two characters in-game decide their characters had a Reputation for being Honourable, one paying points for a positive Rep and the other taking points as a negative Rep, their reputation would come  up in different ways.

 

"I know what it looks like, but I also know Justice Knight is an honourable man - there must be some other explanation.  Let him go."

 

"Swear you will not track us if we release the hostages, Paragon!  [ASIDE - we know he will never break his oath, and he won't let an innocent person suffer for his benefit. We have him now!]

[Duke Bushido]

Funny you mention Justice Knight-  Batman was given as the example that convinced me,to work up,our house rules for element-built reputation:  he has a reputation as a relentless pursued, and for using unspeakabke violence against his enemies, but it never (at least not that any of us knew about in the 80s) really bit him in the butt; it always seemed to work in his favor.

 

So we made Rep it's own thing That couls be good or bad, good _and_ bad on occasion, and it works out pretty well.

[Scott Ruggels]

I think a few of these first appeared in genre books such as Savage Lands by Aaron Allston, also Western Hero, Horror Hero, ect.  and then got consolidated into 4e, afterwards.

 

[Joe Walsh]

I've attached the results of my searches for the origins of 5e skills/talents/powers/etc., should anyone be interested. There may be more to be found, but I will probably stop here for now.

 

I ended up approaching the writing of the document from the perspective of, what if you wanted to start with the 4e rulebook and then add all the skills/powers/etc. that 5e has that the 4e rulebook doesn't (not including all the various little Advantages and Limitations sprinkled throughout the text; just the ones that got their own entries in the appropriate chapter), but didn't want to just copy/paste from 5e wholesale but instead wanted to draw from 4e supplements as much as possible.

 

Thank you for all the help and advice!

 

HERO System 4e Modernization Supplement.docx

 

[Joe Walsh]

I updated the file above to fix some typos and add a bit about what the new-to-5e Grab By maneuver is in terms of 4e maneuvers.

 

Also, for anyone interested in a take on 4e to 5e changes that includes much more detail, at the time of this writing TheEmerged's comprehensive comparison from way back in 2003 is still up:

http://theemerged.blogspot.com/HERO425.htm

 

[Joe Walsh]

Here's the latest version of the origins-of-5e file, updated to include things that originated with the house rules document Aaron Allston shared in 1995 and the Fuzion rules.

 

I looked into these two additional sources when I noticed that Steve Long referenced them as the origin for some of the new stuff in 5e in his "A Peek at the Fifth Edition" Long Shot column from Haymaker #18 (1998).

 

HERO System 4e Modernization Supplement.docx