HERO/BESM Tri-Stat Conversions

[Michael Hopcroft]

What is the most effective way (and I know there are no published guidleines for this for various reasons) to convert BESM attributes and special attacks to HERO powers and spells?

 

Some things do not trnalsate. For example, in BESM after your frist Special attack you get all your other Speical Attacks at a SUBSTANTIAl discount, which encoruages characters to have a "attack for every occasion" at avrious power levels. Also BESM uses fixed damage unless you roll a critical hit, while HERO rolls dice on all attacks 9although once you get to a certain dice level you can reliably determine how much BODY you'll roll on a specific attack when you hit) and you can tone down some attacks if you want to do less damage than stated int eh attack description. And as for characters,m Tri-Stat's three brpoad catgegories and HERO's twleve standard Characteristics plus figured characteristics do not translate well, especially since the BESM stats are a lot less granular. And skills work in an entirely different fashion in the two games (and BESM skills work in a different fashion even from Silver Age Sentinels and Tri-Stat dX skills.

[Monolith]

Reality Storm, coming in March will have a converion system for HERO and SAS. I do not know enough about SAS to make any educated guess about it. So if you can wait until March your questions might be answered.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Originally posted by Monolith

Reality Storm, coming in March will have a converion system for HERO and SAS. I do not know enough about SAS to make any educated guess about it. So if you can wait until March your questions might be answered.

 

SAS and BESM, although they both use similar system, are different animals.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft

SAS and BESM, although they both use similar system, are different animals.

Very true, but I would think that at least 75% of the conversion system in Reality Storm would still work for BESM to HERO.

[Edsel]

Well I hope it works well. The new campaign I am working on (Dark Champions) will include the Hellsing organization and other anime stuff in the campaign world. It'd be real handy to have some help in the conversions.

 

And yes I have a copy of Susano's excellent conversions for Hellsing. It just doesn't hurt to have a second opinion.

 

Slightly off topic has anybody done any work on conversions from the Buffy / Angel system?

[Zeropoint]

The attack costing issue sounds vaguely as if all attacks are purchased through a Multipower.

 

Being familiar with both Hero and BESM, I would go for more of a "concept-level" conversion than trying for numerical equivalents. But, having said that:

 

BESM Body = DEX, STR, CON, BOD

BESM Mind = INT

BESM Soul = EGO, PRE

 

COM would be based on the "Appearance" attribute, and the Hero physical characteristics would, of course, have to account for Damn Healthy!, Super Strength, and Not So Fast/Strong/Tough.

 

As for damage classes of BESM attacks, the BESM "normal" has 40 Health Points compared to the Hero normal's 10 BODY. 15 BESM damage is 37.5% of the character's original health, which makes it pretty close to a 1d6 Killing Attack (3.5 BODY on average). From these numbers, I would say that every 5 points of BESM damage is a Hero damage class, roughly.

 

Some BESM Attributes are going to be Hero skills (Art of Distraction or Animal Friendship, for instance). Other attributes, such as Flight or Telekinesis are defined in real-world terms.

 

I'd convert Extra Attacks to SPD and maybe levels for Sweeping. Combat Mastery sounds like Combat Skill Levels, and Focused Damage would probably be Extra Damage Classes purchased through martial arts. Massive Damage, whereby a character does more damage with ANY attack, has no direct equivalent in Hero, although you could buy a Weapon Element for every WF the character has.

 

With a little thought, you should be able to make conversions that will keep everybody happy. I'd also suggest visiting Michael Surbrook's webpage to look at some of the anime/manga character writeups that he's done for Hero; those could give you some insight, especially if you had a BESM writeup of the same character.

 

I hope you found this helpful.

 

Zeropoint

[Michael Hopcroft]

Another thing to keep in mind is the Tri-Stat concent of "Shock value", which is not used universally (it's an optional rule) but figures in many of my games.it is a fraction of a character's HP that detremines what it takes to put down a character with a single attack. makes combat much brisker and makes it a lot esier to put down scores of lesser foes. You won't neccesarily die if you lose your Chock Value worhth of HP in a single attack, but you will be out of the fight.

 

HERO characters are therefore somewhat tougher even though they have less points in BDOY.

[HeroGM]

March??? long way off from that August 2003 date (sigh)

[Solomon]

I don't usually go for straight system-to-system conversions; I use the "System A - Fiction - System B" approach.

 

I try to define an effect (power, stat, disadvantage, whatever) in narrative terms and work the conversion from there. Depending on character concept, sometimes "special effects" are more important than actual power levels when "porting" a character to a new system. For instance, SAS's "extra attack actions" might or might not translate into additional points of Speed in Champions. They might as well translate to, say, autofire attacks or combat levels, or a combination thereof.