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Character Stats & Differentiation - Help & Thoughts Requested


greypaladin_01

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It is actually the next thing I am thinking about for my Greyhawk HERO thread.  What should the character sheet look like?  I am wondering what I want to highlight to players to emphasise the setting, what the key elements of a Greyhawk game should be, which is a different question to what the key elements of a D&D or HERO game should be.

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12 hours ago, greypaladin_01 said:

 

Very much this is an issue for me.   I am aware of it and trying to flex my brain more, but I have 30+ years of Pulp Fantasy/D&D style power progression in my brain.  

It feels that for FH to work you need the GM to be thinking different, but also the players.   If they are trying for D&D it will have difficulties as well

 

 

You may need a pallette cleanser after D&D, such as run Traveller for a fw months, as there is nearly NO character progression (especially stats) in that system, and without magic the players may start thinking different.

Then spring Fantasy Hero on them. 

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That would be certainly a fun way to do it.  But my gaming schedule is extremely tight... so not sure how likely that would be.    

In part that is why I try to read through the boards here and tap into everyone's experience.   

From what I am picking up so far, it seems that the two biggest things that I will need to work on for the game are:

- opening up the 'free-form" concept of characters not having to be beholded to class archtypes.   - Although how does this jive with the Package Deals.  I assume they are there more just for reference and to help people with general concepts?

- rethinking rewards / progression:  combat is still certainly a thing, but less a road to power progression and more situational to fit story or character behaviors?

I appreciate everyone's help on all of this.

On 5/4/2023 at 1:15 AM, Doc Democracy said:

I sat down and thought "what do my players "need" to play the game?", stripping away detail and numbers and putting in text and flavour I wanted my players to be looking at and thinking about.

 

I found it has given me a different perception about the system, helped me see the toolkit much better as just that, confidence to hide stuff the players probably won't care about.  It definitely made a difference to how my players engaged with the game.

 

In one instance I decided to present the system to look like D20.  All tasks required players to roll 10 or over to succeed in tasks and all skills presented as an adjustment to the roll (Bureaucracy +3).  That helped a lot of players to transition.

 

Doc

 

 

This is something that I have considered as well.  While I don't want FH to look like a D&D clone... the crunchiness of how normal Hero characters sheets can end up looking can be overwhelming to people learning the system.  I noticed how you did the Skill +1 format but didn't understand how you were making that work.   Is it as simple as 10+ on 3d6 is success...   add your skill mod and subtract any penalty modifiers?

 

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The way I look at it most package deals are for players who are having trouble creating their character from scratch.     Racial package deals are the main exception to this.  Those are more about defining what abilities a particular race has in the campaign.  Package deals are mainly to get the player started and to make sure they have the basic things the concept usually needs.

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7 hours ago, greypaladin_01 said:

- opening up the 'free-form" concept of characters not having to be beholded to class archtypes.   - Although how does this jive with the Package Deals.  I assume they are there more just for reference and to help people with general concepts?

 

The key word in Package Deal is Deal.

 

Early on, there were Package Bonuses, which offset some of the cost of the package, and even some of the Characteristics you needed to buy. In return, the Package would include stuff that such a character should have, but wouldn't be all that useful in most games (and thus wouldn't be bought if you were strictly minmaxing). Such bonuses were eliminated later on.

 

The remaining benefit of using Packages is speed of character building. You don't have to plough through huge lists of stuff deciding what you need. Instead, you just pick a Package, buy appropriate Characteristics, and add a bit of stuff to make your character an individual. Much faster. If I was at home I would build a character in real time to show you how it works.

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On 5/5/2023 at 10:18 PM, greypaladin_01 said:

Is it as simple as 10+ on 3d6 is success...   add your skill mod and subtract any penalty modifiers?

 

I made the characters in the standard format for reference when I was making the custom sheets - nice to have that

 

So, 11 or less on 3D6 is exactly equivalent to 10 or better.  If the skill is 12 or less, it is +1 on the sheet, 13 or less +2 etc.

 

For combat, it is essentially the same, just add OCV to the roll and DCV to the target number, so attacking a DCV 5 opponent needs 15 or better to hit on 3D6+OCV.

 

It is all a matter of presentation but the process of simply adding and everything being a +something made those D20 adherents much more comfortable.

Edited by Doc Democracy
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That is certainly part of what I was looking for.   While HERO works well as it is, the systems are pretty old school compared to current-gen RPGs.  Not a deal-breaker by any means, but things that can make it look less daunting to new players is a plus.

Not to mention that streamlining systems tends to help with making rulings on the fly as well.

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14 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Yup, that is right.  8 or less essentially means untrained/unskilled.  Instead of giving a negative, you might simply add 3 to the range number, meaning the character needs 13 or better to succeed (just to stay within the frame of adding things rather than taking away...)

 

 

That would be a good way to do.  But I do like the idea of keeping the target number based 10+difficulty.  While leaving players with the negative for untrained helps show them the difference between trying something they are trained in or not.     "You want to do better, this is an everyman skill,  if you spend the time to learn, and the xp, you can get it up to a +0 or +1 level."

But either approach would work well.

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