What I'd like to see in 5E Revised

[Angaros]

Whoa Steve, I didn't mean it like an insult and certainly not as to imply there's an objective worldwide standard to adhere to. We seem to come from different schools here but the books I've read about typography and layout all insist on margins being used in a particular way. I agree that this reference to a supposed authority (the books) isn't a real argument (philosophically speaking), but I cannot fathom how miniscule margins (not talking about sidebars here) can be a careful design choice. Perhaps Andy can enlighten me. I am honest when I say this. No smirking sarcasms. Hearing about how people think when they design a product is often very informative and in itself a creative experience. Just to make it clear what I'm saying: I'm not demanding an explanation, I'm curious about the motives for this aspect of the layout since I don't share your opinion on the end result.

 

edit: Kolava mentioned having an inch left to spare at the top of the page. The margins in my book are (inner, top, outer, bottom) 20, 15, 10, 5 (in mm). Just to make things clear: I'm not at all talking about sidebars., but the whitespace ousidethe three columns (including the page header).

[Black Rose]

Originally posted by Von D-Man

My only layout complaint is thus:

 

I want ALL of the advantages and limitation in one place. The current method is counter-intuitive from an organizational perspective.

 

AND I LIKE THE SIDEBARS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

 

I'd like to second this. While I like the fact that each of the power "families" has their specific adders, advantages and limitations* right in the oh-so-detailed and very informative description, having to remember whether a given one applies to a certain power type or not, then hunting to look it up is a bit of a drag. I'm sorry, but I suffer from the PsychLim: Cannot Deface Books (common (I read a lot), strong) and will not be adding tabs and such to my copy. At the risk of "wasting" space, could I say that I would think it entirely fine to see them listed twice; once in their section and again in a master list.

 

*and as a note for 6th, I'd really like to see this naming convention changed. I see the reasoning behind it, and even agree with it, to an extent, but having limitations (psych and phys) under the Disadvantages heading bugs me a bit. I don't necessarily have a better answer to the problem, but I have faith in the Great Steve.

[devlin1]

Originally posted by Black Rose

*and as a note for 6th, I'd really like to see this naming convention changed. I see the reasoning behind it, and even agree with it, to an extent, but having limitations (psych and phys) under the Disadvantages heading bugs me a bit. I don't necessarily have a better answer to the problem, but I have faith in the Great Steve.

 

Psychological Restriction...? Constraint?

 

Also, re: grouping Advantages/Limitations together, what about instead of listing everything twice just referencing the duplicates?

[cyst13]

I want to second the opinion on changing the nomenclature of the powers to fit their actual use. Why not just call energy blast "blast"? Age should be "frail". One that I've always found particularly annoying is the skill "seduction". The first sentence of the description says that this skill usually is not used to seduce. So then don't call it that. Even after I explain to players that it's really more "befriend" than seduction, that never really sinks in and they miss opportunities to use the skill to ingratiate themselves with NPCs simply because they forget what "seduction" actually is. And please don't tell me to just change the name on the character sheet, because then I can never find the durned skill description when I go trying to look-up "befriend". In general, all the skills, powers, disads, etc. should be named for what they actually are.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Advantaged & Limitations

 

As far as putting all the Modifiers in the same place, I'm hoping they stay seperated by Advantages and Limitation. I just would like to see all the Power specific, or Power Category specific Modifiers listed along with the rest of them in the same section. Autofire, NND and such are in there and are primarily for Attack Powers. Might as well list the rest of them too.

[rjcurrie]

As for changing the names of Powers or anything, I doubt that Steve plans to do this and I would agree that it shouldn't be done. The main reason it shouldn't happen is that it would make other books in the line confusing to people who came to Hero with 5ER. After all, if the core book describes the Power as Blast, the newcomer is going to be curious about what this Power Energy Blast is that appears in older books of the line. Similarly, people who don't buy 5ER may be confused when the new terminology starts showing up in supplements.

 

As much as any of may want changes like this, they really are things that will have to wait until 6th Edition.

 

Rod

[Dust Raven]

Originally posted by rjcurrie

As for changing the names of Powers or anything, I doubt that Steve plans to do this and I would agree that it shouldn't be done. The main reason it shouldn't happen is that it would make other books in the line confusing to people who came to Hero with 5ER. After all, if the core book describes the Power as Blast, the newcomer is going to be curious about what this Power Energy Blast is that appears in older books of the line. Similarly, people who don't buy 5ER may be confused when the new terminology starts showing up in supplements.

 

As much as any of may want changes like this, they really are things that will have to wait until 6th Edition.

 

Rod

 

I can vouch for this. I came into HERO near the start of 4th, when there were far more suppliments for earlire edition available. I'm still confused about how things worked back then when I look at some writeups (such as those involving Martial Arts or Mental Powers). I can make reasonable guesses at best.

[Steve Long]

Let me go ahead and defuse this one right now.

 

I'm not changing the names of anything in 5ER. While I agree that considering some name changes is a worthwhile endeavor, it's a worthwhile 6th Edition endeavor that should take place many years from now. To the extent any problems exist with the names of game elements (and I'm not necessarily saying there are any), none of them is so troublesome that there's a compelling reason to make a change in a Revised edition.

[Dust Raven]

Except of course that we'll all be calling the book "5ER".

[CorpCommander]

UXB

 

Originally posted by Steve Long

Let me go ahead and defuse this one right now.

 

STEVE LONG: Company Officer, Editor, Newsgroup UXB Defusor. Is there nothing this man can't do???

 

How many points is he built on anyway?

[Dust Raven]

Re: UXB

 

Originally posted by CorpCommander

STEVE LONG: Company Officer, Editor, Newsgroup UXB Defusor. Is there nothing this man can't do???

 

How many points is he built on anyway?

 

He , literally, wrote the book on HERO System. How many points? He must be built on, like... all of them.

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth

The trouble with this, IMO, is that 1"=10" is actually much more useful in many ways than 1"=1KM, and worth more than +1/4. The drawback of MegaScale is that it can't be used in personal scale. Sure, you can use it to build a big Teleport that'll take you to the moon, but you can't use it to Teleport across the street. You can make a Killing Attack that'll wipe out everything in a football stadium, but you have to wipe out everything in the football stadium.

 

If you make the "entry-level" of MegaScale smaller, it greatly reduces that drawback aspect of it. It makes it much more useful in the situations characters generally find themselves in.

 

Actually, the entry-level version already can be smaller. For that first +1/4 you can set the MegaScale at 1"=10 meters, 100 meters, or anything up to one kilometer.

[Lord Liaden]

I also share the concerns expressed about the Power Modifiers and character Disadvantages being scattered across various sections of the book, and often not as separate headings. This is IMO much more of a problem for newcomers to the system, because those of us familiar with HERO and aware of the name of what we want can always look up the appropriate topic in FREd's magnificent Index. If you're unfamiliar with the terminology, though, the Index isn't much help.

 

There's a relatively simple fix for 5ER, though: include a separate index of all the Modifiers and Disads in one place, similar to the "Redwulfe Indices" in the Free Stuff section. That would immediately make that material far more newbie-friendly, and probably save a little thumbing for us vets too.

[Kristopher]

That is one thing I noticed about FREd...there are some Advantages and Limitations scattered in the explanations of the power catagories...

[Vondy]

Originally posted by devlin1

Psychological Restriction...? Constraint?

 

Also, re: grouping Advantages/Limitations together, what about instead of listing everything twice just referencing the duplicates?

 

If you mean having the name of the adv/lim and a line referencing the page number in alpha order in the adv/lim section I would consider this a passable compromise.

 

Another option would be to have a page with a chart at the beginning of the section (sort of like the master list of powers at the beginning of the powers section) that had all the advantages and/or limitations on it with a column referencing the page number.

[Steve Long]

STEVE LONG: Company Officer, Editor, Newsgroup UXB Defusor. Is there nothing this man can't do???

 

How many points is he built on anyway?

 

Not as many as you might think. I saved a bunch by building myself with clever use of Power Frameworks and Transform.

[PhilFleischmann]

A few other things that just occurred to me that I'd like to see, and they don't even involve changing rules!

 

1) Tables of weapons: Within each type or category of weapons (bows, axes, clubs, picks, pole arms, etc.) they should be listed in order of # of DC's not in alphabetical order. Thusly:

 

Littlest Blade 1/2 d6

Small Blade 1d6-1

Light Blade 1d6

Average Blade 1d6+1

Heavy Blade 1 1/2 d6

Big Blade 2d6

Huge Blade 2d6+1

 

From smallest to biggest. That's would be a lot more useful than:

 

Average Blade 1d6+1

Big Blade 2d6

Heavy Blade 1 1/2 d6

Huge Blade 2d6+1

Light Blade 1d6

Littlest Blade 1/2 d6

Small Blade 1d6-1

 

Don't you agree?

 

2. Something that I've found inconvenient about the format of power write-ups especially within Frameworks: In addtion to the Real and Active points of the power, or a slot within a framework, there should be a notation of how much of the framework pool the slot uses up, because it isn't always obvious. You could have a MP something like this:

 

40 Multipower (60 Active point pool)

4u Slot A (60 Active, i.e. uses entire pool)

8m Slot B (60 Active, can use up to entire pool)

4m Slot C, addl -1 lim. (60 Active, can use up to entire pool)

4m Slot D (30 Active, can use up to half the pool)

2u Slot E (30 Active, uses half the pool)

2u Slot F, addl -1/2 lim (45 Active)

 

I would suggest notation like this:

 

In the first (leftmost) column:

40 - Real Cost has no special formatting or notation

4u - Real Cost of Ultra Slot

8m - Real Cost of Multi Slot

(15) - Real Cost of a possible power within a VPP in parens

 

In the main description column (middle):

(60) - Active Points of a power in parens

(Better, +1/2) - Advantage value in parens with Advantage name

(Worse, -1/2) - Limitation value in parens with Limitation name

{-2 1/4} - Total of Limitation values in braces

[50] - Points of the pool used up by a slot in brackets

 

In the last (rightmost) column:

3 - END cost has no special formatting or notation

11- - Roll required for Skill, RSR, Activation, etc.

[6] - Number of Charges in brackets

3 [6] - 6 Charges that cost 3 END each

 

This is mostly the way it's done now with only a few small additions. I'm not sure if what I've described is the best (read: clearest) way to annotate powers, but I think there is a clearer way that is being done currently. The number of points of a pool used should be included in there somewhere.

 

Also, I'd like to see Advantages and Limitations listed as decimals rather than fractions. (+0.5, -0.75, +1.25, etc.)Among other benefits, you'll never have to worry about the imporperly-broken modifier values ever again.

 

3. Don't mix decimals and fractions in the same table. Make it clear which adjustments are additive and which are multiplicative. (OK, FREd doesn't have this problem at all, IIRC, but Fantasy Hero does in the Travel Table, and it's very annoying). That is, make it look like this:

 

Circumstance A -1

Circumstance B +2

Circumstance C -0.5

Circumstance D x0.5

Circumstance E x2

Circumstance F +1.5

Circumstance G x1.5

[zornwil]

Originally posted by lemming

I'll just second Von D-man's two points.

 

I third them.

[archermoo]

Originally posted by zornwil

I third them.

 

Ooo Ooo Ooo...I fourth them!

 

With an agreement that an index of Advantages/Limitations would be an acceptable way of doing things.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by archermoo

Ooo Ooo Ooo...I fourth them!

 

With an agreement that an index of Advantages/Limitations would be an acceptable way of doing things.

 

Agreed, that would work adequately.

[keithcurtis]

Originally posted by Steve Long

Not as many as you might think. I saved a bunch by building myself with clever use of Power Frameworks and Transform.

 

Munchkin.

 

[Stephen_H-G]

No, that's PowerGamer.

 

 

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Munchkin.

 

[Sociotard]

How about mug shots and 1paragraph bibliographies of Steve Long & Co.? C'mon, all the authors are doin' it . . .

[BigMac3000]

Re: UXB

 

STEVE LONG: Company Officer, Editor, Newsgroup UXB Defusor. Is there nothing this man can't do???

 

How many points is he built on anyway?

HeHe, I wonder if theres a character sheet out there for him???? He could appear in a game as the creator of the unierse. Hmmmm... I'll be right back...**mumbling to self**

[Snarf]

Re: What I'd like to see in 5E Revised

 

I'd like it if the Lingering advantage from Fantasy Hero was included in the core rules. It seems like it could be useful outside of Fantasy.