HERO System Sixth Edition--What do *you* want to see?

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by JmOz

Not really. but I was hoping he would admit to screwing up Damage Shield (The continous thing is wrong, makes it at its most basic level wrong, note he even knows it, thus why he uses the KHA power instead, so he can side step and add a additional -1/2 lim)

Actually, he did the exact same thing in 4th Edition, when the Advantage was more to your liking, so that does not constitute proof that he even agrees with your sentiment.

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by GamePhil

Actually, he did the exact same thing in 4th Edition, when the Advantage was more to your liking, so that does not constitute proof that he even agrees with your sentiment.

As a point of clarification, Fourth Edition was the work of McDonald, Petersen, and Bell. It had already been in print for quite some time when Steve's first gaming book, Dark Champions, was published.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by BobGreenwade

As a point of clarification, Fourth Edition was the work of McDonald, Petersen, and Bell. It had already been in print for quite some time when Steve's first gaming book, Dark Champions, was published.

To further clarify: I meant that Steve did this under the Fourth Edition rules, not that he wrote Fourth Edition. There was a character covered with spikes in one of the Dark Champions line that had it purchased like this, I keep thinking Scarecrow? That's not right, but I can't dredge up the right name.

[keithcurtis]

What's the prob? If you don't like Damage Shield as written, house rule it. Does ANYBODY use the rules exactly as written? In any system?

 

Keith "my house, my rules" Curtis

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by keithcurtis

What's the prob? If you don't like Damage Shield as written, house rule it. Does ANYBODY use the rules exactly as written? In any system?

 

Keith "my house, my rules" Curtis

Unfortunately, if it's not your house, it's somebody else's rules, so not a few people want the book done to support their views of how the rules should be. This is an understandable reaction, if not a totally rational one.

[Tom Carman]

New attack roll:

 

Add 10 to DCV, and convert the attack roll to 3d6 + OCV = DCV hit. Of course, you could leave DCV alone and put "- 10" into the equation, but boosting DCV simplifies things.

[Uncle Shecky]

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Does ANYBODY use the rules exactly as written? In any system?

 

BLASPHEMY! Kill the Infidel!

 

I follow every rule, no matter how stupid or damaging to the enjoyment of the game. I even blindly followed the jumping distance rules in 2nd edition D&D's Dungeoneers Survival Guide: distance was based on class and level, not any of those silly, meaningless characteristics! "You think a strong, fast 1st level fighter can out jump a 20th level Cleric with an 8 strength? Are you crazy?!?"

 

And I never speed either.

[Supreme]

The main thing I'd like to see would be fewer side-bars and better organization. I think 95% of all the stuff in the side-bars and in the option sections of all the powers should be shunted into later chapters, or genre books. It would just make things less visually busy and easier to deal with. I also think this would make the game friendlier to new players. I've tried to rope in new players who take one look at the book and say "no thanks."

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by keithcurtis

What's the prob? If you don't like Damage Shield as written, house rule it. Does ANYBODY use the rules exactly as written? In any system?

 

Keith "my house, my rules" Curtis

 

And now, for the rule-geek rebuttal

 

Said it before, will say it again: the GM's veto right and ability to house rule is not and never will be an excuse for maintaining a flaw in the rules.

 

As others noted, house rules only work within the "house". This is a huge problem for, to use a non-HERO example, 3rd Edition DnD's psionic "rules" -- that have a number of hideous flaws. Since WotC/TSR has been slow to correct them, everyone that wants to use them has been forced to choose between either house ruling them half to death, rewriting the entire system, or using them only in a limited format if at all.

 

The result right now is that you can't have any rule or creation discussion (new feats, new powers, etc.) on the psionic rule boards without it diverging into a series of discussions about everyone's house rules.

 

THAT'S why, in my opinion, the "just house rule it" defense holds no weight to speak of.

 

Respectfully,

The "All in the Name of Fun and Meaningful Debate" Emerged

[Peregrine]

Originally posted by Tom Carman

New attack roll:

 

Add 10 to DCV, and convert the attack roll to 3d6 + OCV = DCV hit. Of course, you could leave DCV alone and put "- 10" into the equation, but boosting DCV simplifies things.

 

That sounds suspiciously like d20...

 

BURN THE HERETIC!!!

[tesuji]

[/b]

 

Originally posted by TheEmerged

Said it before, will say it again: the GM's veto right and ability to house rule is not and never will be an excuse for maintaining a flaw in the rules.

I tend to agree here, however, there is one huge glaring omission.

 

One mans flaw is another man's correction.

 

There have been seen on these very boards more than a pittance of people for whom the current DS rule on continuous is "correct" in their eyes. its a correction of earlier problems. They seem to find it proper from their view of how the HERo math-model is supposed to work.

 

For the record, i disagree with them.

 

Originally posted by TheEmerged

As others noted, house rules only work within the "house".

Snipping the off topic, but apparently obligatory, DND bashing (as if there isn't enough in HERO5 to use it as an example, like ohh sayyy DAMAGE SHIELD which has more house rules posted to this board than i can count)...

 

House rules staying within their house is not a bad thing. After all, the purpose of house rules is to make the rule set manufactured for "mass market" work more to the particular tastes and preferences os a given GM and his specific campaign and specific players.

 

 

Originally posted by TheEmerged

The result right now is that you can't have any rule or creation discussion (new feats, new powers, etc.) on the psionic rule boards without it diverging into a series of discussions about everyone's house rules.

So, what are you saying? That rules should be written to make discussion boards topics stay on topic?

Originally posted by TheEmerged

THAT'S why, in my opinion, the "just house rule it" defense holds no weight to speak of.

I really could care less whether any discussion board's rules discussion stay on topic when it comes to what i want my rules to be.

 

I would rather HERO rules work for their genre, which of course gets ugly when genre is not something the hero rules acknowledge.

 

For the record i would have rather seen a DS that works for supers, and by "works" i mean not that it blindly follows a mathematical process but that the final results pass the "am i getting what i pay for" test. As it stands, it seems we have a DS that will only work out to "worth what you pay for" when it is heroified by using oddball advantages and attacks (or even non-attacks with clever spins) so that the "abusive" problems from 4th are now the norm... and simple notions for simple folks who want to play "like the comics" as in "my human torch is surrounded by fire" should NOT use damage shield as their component for building this effect cuz they will pay "more than its worth."

 

This would have entailed making DS a relatively low cost multiplier or even a no-point choice for normal attacks and give it plenty of penalty value adders for the oddball attacks along the lines of autofire.

 

Its an easy house rule...

 

But they did not write a DS for me and my preferences. The math nodel guys seem happy with it. Maybe they wrote it for them? They did not write damage shield for supers? Maybe they wrote it for westerns or cyber or ninja or fantasy or a lot of those other genres i don't use hero for. Maybe it works for them.

 

Since i only need a ds for supers and i know how much its worth in my games... i can house rule it.

[Lord Liaden]

Almost everyone who posts here disagrees with the costing of the current Damage Shield, even if they agree with the conceptual model in principle (I include myself in that group), but I've rarely seen two of the critics agree about how to correct it.

 

In the case of most other rules changes - Multiple Power attacks, cost of Aid, damage from Haymakers, whatever - I've seen just as many people claim they love them as hate them. That's why most of these proposed "fixes" will remain within the realm of houserules; concensus is practically impossible. It's also why we need one informed person to make decisions about the "official" rules. For the most part, I think that Steve Long has made very good decisions. I disagree with some of them, but I don't expect Steve to change his rulings based on my opinion.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think a forum like this thread is a great place to raise issues and exchange ideas. Something one of us suggests might be just what another reader may be looking for to adjust his own game more to his liking. And who knows, whoever ends up writing 6th Edition might pick up some of the ideas expressed this way and make them official.

 

But for now, house rules are the only practical alternative for someone who doesn't like the official way of doing something.

[TheEmerged]

RE: DnD "Bashing". Not hardly. Go to the DnD official boards, especially the Psionic board. Yep, I'm the same TheEmerged. Perhaps I was wrong to believe that using a "neutral" example would allow for some perspective.

 

RE: On Topic. Hmm, must've been a bad post on my part. I could care less about board posts staying on topic; I'm quite bad for derailing myself.

 

What I was saying was that in an environment when "House Rule It!" is the response to a broken rule, you lose the "yardstick" standard. Take my own house rules for DnD Psionics, for example -- definitely from the "rewrite it" school of thought, as I've rewritten nearly 1/3rd of the powers in the PsiHB, come up with an entirely different mechanic for psionic combat (translation: changed psionic combat to a slight variant of physical combat), changed multiple feats... As a result of those changes, I ended up having to give psions an almost completely different mechanic for determining Powers Known.

 

The result? Whereas I used to be an almost constant presence on the Psionics board, these days I can barely contribute at all without spending three paragraphs explaining myself. This is also true for several other people on the board, many of whom don't show up at all now (in fairness, Psi&Co got banned for being an idiot and Strutian seems to appear only to hawk his own wares).

 

Am I house-ruling Damage Shield for my own campaigns? Of course. That's not a solution, however: it is only a stopgap.

[ShadowRaptor]

two questions:

do we need SHREd? FREd just came out.

can't we all just get along and be nice to each other?

[Mutant for Hire]

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

two questions:

do we need SHREd? FREd just came out.

can't we all just get along and be nice to each other?

 

1. We're years away from SHRed. This is just free-ranging speculation about what we'd like to see in a next edition game.

 

2. Of course not.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

two questions:

do we need SHREd? FREd just came out.

can't we all just get along and be nice to each other?

Well, Fifth Edition was discussed much like this for years before it was actually written (and several more before it saw print), so we're just getting a head start.

 

And, while we certainly can't be nice to each other, I thought this was a fairly polite thread.

[Arthur]

Boy am I late getting into this one:

 

HERO 6

 

(1) Change the cost of STR to x2. This is probably the most glaring flaw in the system. I've seen too many Champions games where every single character had STR 25+. And the problem is twice as bad in Heroic games! If you don't go with a STR of at least 18, you are voluntarily hobbling your character. Some dedicated roleplayers will do that, but why should they have to?

 

(2) Do something to address the END/REC problem in low-point games. In a low-point game, SPD tends to be lower. At a low SPD, the END and REC system breaks down: it's not unusual at all for characters to be tireless. Two possible fixes:

 

A. In Heroic games (or all games), go back to the original paradigm of 1 END per 5 AP. This works out nicely in that 1d N = 1 END.

 

B. Increase base SPD by 2 in Heroic level games. Change the scale such that 1" = 1 meter.

 

C. Increase base SPD by 1 in Heroic games. You wouldn't need to mess with the scale. It would make characters a little faster than what is realistic, but not so much as to be absurd.

 

 

(3) Define the system that relates KE to damage and stick to it. In 4E, an analysis of firearms showed that you could equate 50 J at 1 DC, with a each doubling of KE being a +1 DC. Put a stop this new notion of picking values out of the air. A lot of us like to game-stat out real-world weapons - arbitrary values make that difficult and inconsistent.

 

(4) Reinstate the +1 OCV for swords.

 

(5) Eliminate "absolute" Powers Invisibility and Desolidification. Replace them with graduated effects: Obscure and Density Decrease (or whatever). Each level of Obscure would be a penalty to detections; each level of Density Decrease would allow you to ignore 1 BODY worth of attacks and 1 DEF worth of objects. Or something to that effect.

 

(6) Make Regen consistent with Healing. Set a default value of "once per day" and charge a +1/4 Advantage for each step up on the Time Chart. For instance, Regen at once per Turn would have to be built with a "Reset Time" of 1 Turn for a +1.5 Advantage. Makes Regen expensive, but it's worth it. That also makes the slower Regen times more appealing: many character concepts call for healing on the order of 1 BODY per hour.

 

(7) Use Skill Defaults a la GURPS.

 

(8) Reduce the costs of Immunity to Poison and Disease to 5 points each - tops. How often are characters exposed to disease? I could see 3 for all diseases and 5 for all poisons.

 

(9) Here's an easy one: Damage Shield! The old way at +1/2 was fine.

 

(10) Keep Haymaker just the way it is in FRED! That was a House Rule of mine for years before that, anyway. Puts it in line with every other martial maneuver.

 

(11) Write up a list of 0-point maneuvers using UMA and make them optional maneuvers anyone can use. For instance, anyone can make an "all-out attack" at +2 OCV and -2 DCV.

[AaronD]

Originally posted by Tom Carman

New attack roll:

 

Add 10 to DCV, and convert the attack roll to 3d6 + OCV = DCV hit. Of course, you could leave DCV alone and put "- 10" into the equation, but boosting DCV simplifies things.

 

I've played this way for years. Plus I change skills to bonuses and roll 3d6+bonus to beat a target number. This makes much more sense as well as greatly simplifying skill versus skill tests. All without changing probabilities one bit.

 

 

Aaron

[Old Man]

I wouldn't minds seeing an overall scale change wrt stats. One of the big problems with running a heroic level game right now is the extreme granularity. If 'normal' stats were set to around 20 average that would increase the resolution a lot. Of course there are a lot of ramifications to making that 'simple' change.

 

The skill system also needs to be revamped such that each point of relevant stat matters. That way an INT of 14 matters more than an INT of 13 when making a deduction roll.

 

And I still think STR needs to cost 2/pt, for heroic level games if not superheroic.

[Fitz]

I think something I'd like to see is a change from measuring ranges and everything in inches and change the measurments all to metres -- Fear not, metrically-challenged folks: a metre is close enough to a yard for game purposes, so in-your-head conversions on the fly should be easy enough

 

That would have the big advantage of making in-game descriptions directly relevant to real-world units. It would also allow the use of variable hex sizes when playing with a battlemat. For example, if you were playing a wide-open battlefield scenario, you could use a "BigHex" battlemat and define the hex size as 10m (I realise I could do that anyway, defining the hexes as 5", but it just feels easier to do it with metres directly - less brain-hurting conversion necessary).

[gewing]

1st:

Strength should cost 2 points/ point. This would simplify many things, and allow simplification in particular on HA.

 

Fix Regen.

 

Current Shapeshift bothers me. I feel it went from too cheap to too expensive. NOt sure how it would be better.

 

Re-write weapon tables. Pole arms were not useless for small people. >45 ACP is not more powerful than .41 Magnum. I know, I'm a nut.

 

Make rounding always work after addition.

[gewing]

Hear Hear! all advantages etc should be alphabetically listed in the same section.

 

 

 

Originally posted by Harry Canyon

This is like the structure of so many things. But UI/Workflow design for software comes to mind.

 

Frequently, if someone finds a really good UI/Workflow in a program, it's because the design follows how that person "thinks". They want tool x and, lo and behold, it's right there were they expect it.

 

With a poor UI/Workflow, occasionally it's just designed by people with a different workflow, so it seems bad. Even though there are plenty of people who like that particular design. (Although it certainly could just suck by all standards! )

 

Several have mentioned some good things, for one a Damage Shield does seem a bit pricey to me. But I think they've managed to be very internally consistent with most things.

 

First, I've yet to finish the entire Black Tome of Goodness. With that said, what I'd like to see in a future version is quite frankly, better organization. What? You ask? How can that be?

 

Initially I was quite impressed. Quick rundown of the different types of powers, then on to the detailed descriptions of the powers themselves. Okay. So far so good. I finished the powers section and decided to create my first villian. (I'm a long time Hero player, so I figured I'd just look up the details as needed.) So I'm merrily jotting down powers and advantages/limitations and need to see their values. I look in the appropriate section. Strange... It's not there. On to the index! Oh, there it is. What's it doing there? Why are some advantages and limitations only listed within power descriptions or power examples, instead of in the logical sections titled "Advantages" and "Limitations"? Certainly some arguement could be made that those powers are the ones they are most commonly used with. But how does that help the reader find them easily? I can also see arguement for not repeating them to save space. This is certainly valid and allows for more data in the book, but it doesn't help the "workflow" IMO.

 

Then again maybe "they" just "think differently" than I do.

 

So, uhh... that's what I'd like... So far...

 

Take care,

 

Harry

[gewing]

We kept it based on Recovery also.

 

Originally posted by johnflang

A change I would like to see in Sixth Edition. When you are dropped below zero in stun, the table you recover too should be based on a stat, be it total stun, recovery, con etc...

 

In our campaign we use Multiples of recovery and the time chart. It makes no sense to me that a hero with a recovery of 35 that is knocked down neg 31 is at GM descretion but a hero with recovery of 10 who is neg 10 gets a recovery every phase.

 

In our campaign we use Recovery as the stat to base timeline on. It works, we have used it for years and everyone likes. If you have a high recovery or can have your recovery "aided" then it makes the game more interesting than GM discretion.

 

In a modern day HIghlander campaign we had a immortal on a jog. He crested the hill as a teammate fumbled a role with a fully loaded M60. By the time the dust had cleared our immortals first recovery was 5000 years later. It took a 3 month magic ritual to get his recovery high enough and 3 months of sustaining it to get him concious again. We had a fun doing the research and the ritual.

 

In conculsion, I would like to see a change to the table and get rid of GM discretion on neg 31 stun.

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by gewing

Hear Hear! all advantages etc should be alphabetically listed in the same section.

 

I certainly agree that this would be very helpful, especially for new HERO players. If you're new you don't necessarily know what everything is called, and if you don't remember its name the index, thorough as it is, may not help you find it. Even I, who's been picking up Hero Games products since 1983, have been thrown a couple of times trying to find something the name of which has been changed in 5E.

 

For those who are unaware of it, there's a PDF file available on the "Free Stuff" page with all the Power Modifiers from FREd and several other books listed in alphabetical order, with page numbers to the appropriate books. If the pertinent part of that listing could be included in a few extra pages of a revised version of FREd, I think it would make the rulebook more accessible to newbies.

[Mutant for Hire]

To reiterate my opinions:

 

1. Power construction needs to be redefined. Players should construct powers from the ground up, specifying an effect and then purchasing range, duration, targetting, area of effect and a list of other features as well.

 

2. Figured characteristics need to go, with possible characteristic cost modifications in the process.

 

3. Switching from inches to meters is a good idea and will make things less confusing for incoming players.

 

4. See my COM thread for what I'd like to see done with COM

 

5. Regeneration and Healing both need fixing. Regen needs to be REC moved up the time chart and Healing needs that X per day limitation removed and made GM fiat

 

6. Elemental Controls need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Thematic limitations are too vague and too much subject to debate. Eliminate the need for thematic unity and merely make it a pool of powers that get a discount for being linked together for being affected by Adjustment powers.